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Tag Archives: AirBnB

Asleep at the Wheel with the Bard and the Bankers

21 Thursday Apr 2016

Posted by Burning Manager in Uncategorized

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AirBnB, AlphaGo, Arriana Huffington, banks, Chariot for Women, Dan Siegel, Fran Kelly, Jessica Hische, Lister, SafeHer, Shakespeare;, Taxis, The Sleep Revolution, Timon of Athens, Uber

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I always thought writer’s block was an excuse for a lazy break in the Bahamas but now that I’m a ‘committed’ blogger I get it. It’s been two weeks and, guess what, I have a touch of writer’s block. It’s strange really given there is so much on. But perhaps that’s the problem? My mind has been flitting from one topic to another, it’s been hard this last couple of weeks to reflect and go a bit deeper. So, listening to my ‘go to’ broadcaster (Fran Kelly) in the car this morning on the way to work, I resolved to write about what is happening right now and see if firstly I can make any sense of it and, much more challenging, see if I can integrate this into a meaningful blog.

On the matter of integration I’ve just signed up for the Dan Siegel visit. He’s coming to Sydney to do a seminar on Optimal Leadership. Siegel is a Harvard trained UCLA paediatrician and psychiatrist who is one of the world’s foremost experts on mindfulness. His Mindsight Institute focuses on, guess what, integration, which he describes as acknowledging the differences and celebrating the linkages. A bit like my blogs! Given we have just had a double dissolution trigger in the Australian Parliament this week, let’s hope the 2016 Australian Federal election campaign embraces some of Siegel’s principles and we can have a campaign unsullied by rancour that focusses on policy debate. Let’s acknowledge the differences and celebrate the linkages as a voting public.

For many, the thought of a long election is enough to send them to sleep. And it was on the matter of sleep this week that got me interested in the new Arianna Huffington book The Sleep Revolution. Huffington’s latest advice is to get more sleep. Wise words that are sometimes harder to achieve than we might think. I’m putting my sleep deprivation down to Netflix. I’m finding the urge to watch the next episode straight after the one I’ve just watched sometimes too much of a temptation. It’s like a bag full of lollies. It will still be there the next day but hey…just one more.

It’s the 400th anniversary of Shakespeare’s death this weekend. Many school students would list Shakespeare as their number one cure for insomnia but he has always been my ‘go to’ bloke. In my early career I went for a job interview and midstream one of the panellists interrupted everyone else and asked me to tell them a joke. I was so focussed on the interview questions and process  I couldn’t disengage my brain to bring a joke forward; needless to say I didn’t get the job. Henceforth I have always had a joke up my sleeve. It goes thus:

‘Shakespeare walks into a pub totally inebriated (I may occasionally say ‘pissed’ if I get the feel that the panel is warming to me and wants a bit of moxie) and the landlord shouts at him ‘you’re bard’.

Silly, sure, but it is very fit for purpose. It is rapid fire so sounds like you are quick on your feet, everyone gets it, it’s totally inoffensive and it gives a suggestion that you can be intellectually highbrow without the associated snobbery.

As it happens I studied Shakespeare all my way through university so am familiar with quite a few of his plays including many of the seldom studied ones e.g. Troilus and Cressida and Coriolanus. My all-time favourite though, is the lesser known Timon of Athens. A short synopsis is warranted:

Timon, a friendly and generous Athenian nobleman, has many friends because of his generosity, often lending money to his friends with no expectation placed on them to pay it back. He loves to spend money and holds frequent parties. A day comes, however, when he falls into debt and his many creditors put pressure on him to pay them what he owes. His steward, Flavius, tells him that he’s completely out of money. Timon sends servants to his friends to ask whether they can lend him the money he needs but they are met with excuses. Timon is disappointed and angered. He invites all his friends to a final feast where he presents them with only warm water. He makes a speech denouncing them, and also harangues them with a bitter tirade against mankind generally.

My favourite line of Shakespeare’s is what Timon says to his onetime friends as they gather at the tables to gorge themselves on his supposed hospitality. They lift their individual cloches at the same time and the hot water steams in their face. He shouts the unforgettable line:

‘Uncover you dogs and lap.’

The Banking industry is very much in the news at the moment. Calls for a Royal Commission by the Labor (sic) opposition have so far fallen on deaf ears. Banks are interesting organisations. I’ve had friends who have worked in them and they have a sort of ‘cultish’ feel. It used to be true at least that banking staff only really socialised with banking staff. You only got your friends back when they left that industry. Scientology – not quite – but on that spectrum for sure. An analogue might be the police socialising with other police. Only other workers in the same industry can understand the issues is the suggestion. I get it with the Police having to deal with the horrors that often make up that job but the horrors of banking …really?

But think again – there have been so many horror stories lately perhaps the bank staff are right. Only other banking staff can ever understand the duplicity/two-facedness, the wild nights out, the crazy remuneration, the adrenaline rush, the desperate desire to get your business and the immoral speed at which they then cut you off. I don’t hate the banks. At times I despise them for some of the things they do. One of my biggest bugbears is the shameful advertising that they do. They are obsessed with presenting this friendly face to woo you as a customer but really if you don’t keep up the repayments they are dispassionate to the point of cold-blooded ruthlessness. Ask my mate recently made bankrupt in New Zealand by one of the big four Australian banks. He’s in commercial leasing like me and when he got into a spot of cash-flow difficulty the banks called in his loan and did a fire sale on his property. A property valued by a professional valuer at $1.7m was sold in rapid time for $500k.

It can only be rationalised as a decision that totally takes the humanity out of the equation and looks purely in dollar terms. An economic rationalist model stretched to its breaking point. I still am no supporter of a Royal Commission into the banks though. I’d rather load up Google’s AlphaGo (the one that beat the Korean Master at the almost impenetrable game of Go) super computer with some block-chain rules, feed the banking data in and just email out the results to the banking executives, which may or may not contain their ‘pink slips’ (aka P45s, separation certificates). After all, the banking sector is leading the way on automation and taking humans out of the loop. What goes around…..

My final reflection is on innovation, which will be a theme for future blogs as well. In Queensland this week we have outlawed Uber and other ride share companies. Those caught driving Uber cars face substantial fines. As many are migrants and students looking to make some extra bucks, then this will be a big disincentive for them to keep driving. I can’t square the notion of disruption and innovation, which is being encouraged at the Federal level, with State protectionism. Some of the argument is that ridesharing is an unregulated service. Fact is I can’t think of anything better regulated than Uber, perhaps other than eBay or AirBnB. Regulation comes through the rating of the service which is where the app and its disruption comes into play. The ability of me to rate my Uber driver, which I always do, means that any misbehaviour has a direct hip-pocket consequence for him or her.

Our State regulated Taxi monopolies on the other hand are apparently stringently regulated. My daughter recounted stories to me of her and her friends being not infrequently ‘propositioned’ by their regulated taxi drivers that there might be other ways of paying their taxi fare that did not involve a financial transaction. Do this on Uber and you lose your rides. In fact, I heard this week that the situation has got so bad that a company in the US called Chariot for Women is starting a ride service by women for women, primarily to deal with this issue. We simply have to think smarter to address disruption. Outlawing it strikes me as counter-productive and ultimately futile. We all know that in the long-term the collaboration (share) economy is here to stay; our asset hungry acquisitive Baby-boomer lifestyles have seen to that.

The other interesting thing that happened this week at work was some internet surfing that took me to Jessica Hische’s website. OK you might think what has this got to do with work, but it so happens Hische, who is a letterer, coined the phrase ‘procrastiworking’. It’s something I do most days between 3.30 and 4.30pm when my blood sugars are low. What is drawing me to street artists and people like Hische is that they seem to embrace the paradox between being radical individuals raging against the machine and great collaborators. A lot, not all, are young but they are all bloody talented. How, I ponder, do they manage to be so ‘anti’ but so ‘together’? So creative but so organised? I have a feeling if we are to unlock the huge potential in Australia and create true innovation we need to understand what makes individuals and teams like D-Face, Hische, Smits Lister and their cohorts tick.

Therein lies a rich seam of knowledge that can reap reward. If we fail, we may well find ourselves asleep at the wheel of a downward spiralling economy. No-one wants this except possibly Adrianna Huffington….the sleep bit I mean!

 

When Mainstream Plays Catch-Up

03 Wednesday Dec 2014

Posted by Burning Manager in Uncategorized

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Tags

AirBnB, Australia, BMW, collaboration economy, collaborative consumption, commercial leasing, CTC, DriveNow, Environment, Gen Y, Hot Leasing, industrial leasing, Millenials, Rachel Botsman, Share Economy, The Australian Financial Review, Uber, US car sales

P90074325                                                               IMG_7253 DriveNow ist ein Carsharing - Joint Venture der BMW Group und de

I read with interest in The Australian Financial Review (2nd Dec 2014) that BMW is joining in the collaborative consumption movement. Otherwise known as the collaborative economy or share economy (yes we have issues with nomenclature). You know when the more staid Germans start adopting new ideas that they really are becoming the new paradigm. Their contribution to the share economy is something called DriveNow. What is different from car rentals you may ask?  Well it’s a disruptor to that model (check out my previous blog on disruptors) and something that must be a concern to the car rental market and indeed traditional car manufacturing.

In the same way as the Gen Y don’t want to own the book, but just read the content, or not own the CD but just listen to the music, so people are not wanting to own the car but just get from A to B. What is different about DriveNow is that is operates a bit like the bike schemes most large cities have (except the Brisbane one where the bikes seem always to be parked up not ridden). So it is a one way disposable trip, in other words you just drive then park it. GPS lets BMW know where the vehicles are. Access is via a smartphone app and you pay by the minute. Brokerage company Aviate Global has estimated that 1 sharing vehicle removes 32 personal vehicles. You can see therefore how this can be good for the environment as well; which is a core pillar of the share economy. 5% growth in car sharing by the 2020 could halve US car sales. What is driving many squeezed by the economy and rising house prices is the fact that the second biggest asset we are likely to own, our car, is utilised on average only 4% of the time in a 24 hour day. That’s a lot of idle time.

The opportunities for BMW to tailor the experience through mass customisation to the driver are immense. Imagine getting in your DriveNow vehicle to have you Spotify database available immediately through the car’s entertainment system, the 50 most recent destinations pre-loaded into the Sat Nav, reminders through the car stereo of birthdays and anniversaries pending as you are approaching a florist. Seat positions can be pre-programmed and comfort levels for temperature etc. the possibilities are endless as is heads-up information on the screen as driverless technology takes hold. London cabbies must be quaking in their boots. Uber must be quaking in its boots. Here is old school disrupting the disruptor…the fight back has begun methinks.

While share economy companies are good for the customer and the environment one of the key issues upon which their success relies is trust. Take AirBnB for example. I was fortunate to hear Rachel Botsman do a keynote address some years ago and as a result stayed in Pat’s New York apartment for three weeks. He wasn’t there of course but he did meet us at 11pm when we arrived and he gave us a run down of the apartment and the neighbourhood before depositing his key with us and pedalling off down East 71 Street into the night. He didn’t know us from Adam but there we were in his apartment amidst all of his clutter and his most valuable possessions. Trust. As we now know Air BnB is a worldwide phenomenon. In the case of BMW’s DriveNow initiative trust will also be key, but they start off a high base because the brand of BMW smacks of trustworthiness. It’s quality cars they are offering that are fun and environmentally responsible. Once again trust. As we know from the theory of sales, once trust has been established it makes moving to sales closure much easier.

The second core pillar in making your share economy company succeed is a willingness by the public to ditch the status quo and try your offering. That first encounter they have can be all important. Everyone knows that complaints travel faster than compliments and Baby Boomers will tell 10 times more people about a bad experience than a good one. Gen Y’s will Tweet and/or Facebook about bad experiences. Millennials, according to Nick Bowditch, Twitter’s main man in Australia, will just set up a business in opposition to yours if they don’t have a good experience and disrupt yours by doing things better and faster. So the offering has to be based on trust and be enticing and fulfil or exceed expectations. Nothing difficult here then. At my company we have our own share economy initiative called Hot Leasing . The trust issue is OK as we have been in business approaching 21 years and have a reputation in the market for being ethical and reliable. The challenge for us is the presentation of an idea so radical that it will take time for the market to adjust to a new possibility. Unlike say a taxi journey or a few nights stay in an apartment, our offering requires a massive change in business behaviour with companies moving from long-held leases to a free-wheeling working life where they pay as they go, only interacting with us when they are interfacing with their clients. We are, simply put, the Air BnB of the commercial/industrial leasing space. And we are excited about it. Gradually people are catching on. There is no need to own expensive equipment like forklifts or elevated work platforms etc. There’s no need even to lease or hire them. With us that’s all part of the package. We have a well-developed process for cherishing each and every brand that uses our facilities and the experience of students and trainers exceeds expectations. We await the main-streaming of the share economy so that the more risk averse can start looking at our proposition for what it is; an excellent, low-risk, environmentally sound way to do business.

While on the subject of the environment it is always good to buy local as opposed to buying nationally and buy nationally as opposed to buying internationally. In order to assist with some Australian examples here are share economy companies collaborative evangelists may wish to consider. I’m more than happy to share these with you. After all isn’t that what collaboration is all about?

 

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