Leadership

The Biggest River in the World

Posted on by edreidyork


Do you remember when you first heard of it?

“There’s this company in America. Only sells books. And only sells them online.”

“Really? What’s it called?”

“Amazon, I think.”

“Right. Well good luck with that. I read somewhere that people aren’t reading books any more. And it’s not like this internet thing is going to last…”

You probably had that conversation some time in the late 90s. Just 20 years later Amazon is the biggest online retailer in the world as measured by revenue and market capitalisation. And Jeff Bezos, founder, chairman, president and CEO, is the richest man in the world.

BEZOS

How has Bezos built Amazon to where it is now? And more importantly, are there any lessons we can apply to our rather more modest businesses?

Amazon was founded in July 1994. It was originally called Cadabra, but that name was jettisoned after someone mistakenly heard it as ‘cadaver.’ Bezos also considered calling the company ‘Relentless’ – but that was dismissed for sounding “slightly sinister.”

So why did Bezos settle on Amazon as a name? Because it sounded “exotic and different” and because it was the biggest river in the world and he intended to create the biggest bookstore in the world. “There’s nothing about our model that can’t be copied,” he told a reporter. “McDonald’s got copied and still built a huge, multibillion dollar company. A lot of it comes down to the brand name: they’re more important online than they are in the physical world.”

So lesson number one, brand names are important and lesson number two – not that I’ve ever said this before – the job of a leader is first and foremost to lead, to know where the company is going. “We’re going to create the biggest bookstore in the world.” Good, that’s the destination sorted: and if you want to join me on the journey, that’s fine.

Since then, of course, Amazon has gone on to become rather more than just a bookstore, even going back to a substantial bricks and mortar presence with the purchase of Whole Foods for $13.4bn in 2017.

Now Amazon supplies everything. I am constantly amazed by how many everyday items I buy from them. It simply isn’t worth going shopping – we’ll leave the rights and wrongs of Amazon’s impact on the high street to another day – when I know that Amazon will deliver for free tomorrow. And yes, I still remember the sense of wonderment when I first ordered something late at night and it turned up – as promised – the next day.

There are now more than 100 million members of Amazon Prime: that’s equivalent to 64% of the households in the US and for me it’s lesson number three. Deliver what you promise to deliver, on time, every time.

But the biggest lesson from Amazon is simple. It’s one that all of us in the TAB family know all too well – but it never hurts to be reminded.

No regrets.

When he founded Amazon at the age of 30 Jeff Bezos was a vice-president of a Wall Street brokerage. He was presumably on course for a successful and wealthy career.

But he went west, as a result of what he described as his ‘regret minimisation framework.’ In a 2010 speech at Princeton he described the decision as “the less safe path.”

“I decided I had to give it a shot,” he said. “I didn’t think I’d regret trying and failing. And I suspected that I would also be haunted by the decision not to try.”

The company was funded with $100,000 of personal and family money. Within a month of the launch it had already shipped to every US state and to 45 countries. In the first five years customer accounts jumped from 180,000 to 17 million. Sales went from $511,000 to $1.6bn – and Jeff Bezos was one of the world’s richest men.

One final lesson? An absolute focus on your customer. Amazon has always been a company willing to spend money to make money. It failed to make an annual profit in 10 of its first 23 years as it ploughed money back into what Bezos described as a “heads down focus on the customer,” cutting prices, offering free shipping and developing new devices like the Kindle.

Along the way Amazon has revolutionised our shopping habits: the current buzzword, disruption, doesn’t begin to describe it. And like every successful company, plenty of ex-employees have gone on to found very successful companies of their own – always a measure of an entrepreneur’s success.

But none of it would have happened without Jeff Bezos’ regret minimisation framework – his decision to take the less safe path. The poet Robert Frost put it rather more eloquently, in words which speak to every single entrepreneur:

Two roads diverged in a wood and I –

I took the one less travelled by,

And that has made all the difference.

A Tale of Four Leaders

Posted on by edreidyork


I have, of course, stolen the title from Charles Dickens. As your English teacher drummed into you, his Tale of Two Cities begins with one of the most memorable opening lines there is: ‘It was the best of times, it was the worst of times.’

For those of us in the TAB UK community, the last few weeks have simply been the worst of times. As many of you will know, Paul Dickinson, the founder of TAB UK and a man to whom I owe an immeasurable personal debt, died 2 weeks ago. His funeral is today.

At the end of last month Barry Dodd, an inspirational leader of the Yorkshire business community, died in a helicopter crash.

On May 3rd I wrote Darker Thoughts from an Old Friend, pondering a simple question: do you make sacrifices now, in the hope and expectation of a better future? Or do you live life to the full, accepting that the future may never arrive? Well, today I’ll be the one with the darker thoughts as I reflect on that question I asked six weeks ago.

I’ll also be reflecting on the nature of leadership.

If Paul Dickinson and Barry Dodd taught us anything, it was that leaders can and do make a difference. And that their job is simple: it is to lead and take decisions.

On Tuesday night the House of Commons voted for what appears to be yet another fudge on the road to Brexit. We are – give or take a few days – a week away from the second anniversary of the Brexit referendum. It was held on 23rd June 2016: two years on we still have no clear idea of what shape Brexit will ultimately take.

As commentator Patrick Wintour wrote recently, referring to yet another squabble in Cabinet, it was “The apotheosis of May-ism. Her ministers unable to agree what it means to set a date for when they expect to stop kicking a can down the road.”

As everyone knows, I voted to remain in the EU. If the poll were re-run tomorrow I would vote the same way. But I am a democrat: I accept the result. And I am running a business: so let’s get on with it. No commercial organisation would tolerate – or could survive – such indecision.

Our job, as leaders, is to take decisions. It’s come to something when Tony Soprano talks more sense than the British Prime Minister but as he famously said, “A wrong decision is better than indecision.”

If you make no decision: if – as we see – you cannot decide what you want from a negotiation, then you will simply have to accept what you are offered.

I wonder what Paul and Barry would have made of it? Well, I know what Paul made of it as we chatted about the shambles frequently: it doesn’t bear repeating.

Say what you like about the 49th President of the United States. He doesn’t suffer from indecision. And suddenly here’s the leader of North Korea committing to a de-nuclearized Korean peninsula. Paul Dickinson and Barry Dodd may not have approved of much that Donald Trump stands for – but they’d have recognised a successful negotiation.

Let me finish by returning to Dickens – and a personal note on Paul’s passing. Many of us know, ‘It was the best of times…’ Few of us know the next two lines. “It was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness.”

There is far too much foolishness in the world, so I’ll concentrate on wisdom – and the wisdom that Paul Dickinson passed on to me, including five very simple words: “Ed, just try smiling more.”

As I wrote in an earlier e-mail to the TAB UK family, smiling is pretty bloody tough right now – but I will try to take comfort from everything Paul gave me.

Sunrise-Bright-Fields

His example, and the knowledge that he passed on to me, changed my life. He was, in the very best sense of the word, a leader. Paul had a vision, the courage to pursue that vision, and the charisma to take others with him on the journey.

That is the legacy he leaves us. And if we follow his example then – for both ourselves and our families – we will surely create the very best of times.

Trouble Down Under – and what it can teach us

Posted on by edreidyork


Monday March 26th

I’ve been writing the blog for nearly eight years now, and for the first time ever I’m going to split it into two halves: a game of two halves you might say as, not for the first time, I’m using sport as an analogy for business.

Almost no-one reading the blog – at least in the UK – can fail to be aware of the current controversy surrounding the Australian cricket team. But for those of you in Europe and the US, let me briefly summarise.

Australia are currently playing a test series in South Africa: to describe it as acrimonious is an understatement. At the weekend the series stood at 1-1, with the third test being played in Cape Town. South Africa were ahead in the game and batting in their second innings – at which point Cameron Bancroft, the newest member of the Australian team, reached into the pocket of his cricket flannels. TV cameras around the ground filmed him looking remarkably guilty as he paid the ball some extravagant attention (with sandpaper, as it later turned out).

I won’t go into the intricacies of swing bowling. Bancroft was tampering with the ball to give his team an unfair advantage. But this wasn’t the action of a lone player: this was a plot hatched by the senior members of the team: “the leadership group” as they were described.

Australian captain Steve Smith and Bancroft quickly admitted their cheating – and confessed that at the very least, the captain and David Warner, the vice-captain, had encouraged Bancroft to tamper with the ball.

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…And that’s why I’m splitting the blog in two. The Australian Cricket Board are to hold an immediate enquiry. Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull has expressed his outrage. Perhaps most tellingly, veteran Aussie cricket commentator Jim Maxwell has been virtually reduced to tears on air.

At this point, what would a business do? Two of your senior executives have admitted cheating. They have damaged your worldwide reputation. They’ve brought into question your previous successes which – quite naturally – people are saying were gained through cheating. And to cap it all, they got a junior member of the company to do their dirty work.

But hang on. Both the executives have a worldwide reputation. One of them is perhaps your best performer for 50 years. Dismissing them will seriously weaken your company: there are simply no ready-made replacements.

No business that wanted – or deserved – to be taken seriously would hesitate. Smith and Warner would be instantly dismissed. Bancroft would be given a savage reprimand but he’d keep his job. And then the questions would start. If the two execs were conspiring, was the director they report to aware of it? Given their close working relationship he must have been aware of what they were planning. So how high up the organisation does the rot go?

That is exactly where Cricket Australia now find themselves. Many of us have been in the close atmosphere of a dressing room at some stage in our lives: if a plot was being hatched, everyone in the team would have been aware of it. I find it inconceivable that the coach, Darren Lehmann, didn’t know. So how does the Board react to the cheating? And make no mistake, it is cheating every bit as much as an athlete taking steroids is cheating.

Thursday April 5th

So now we know: all three players were sent home from South Africa. Smith and Warner have been banned for a year, Bancroft for nine months. Coach Darren Lehmann was found not to have known anything – but has resigned anyway.

Both Smith and Warner have now performed the modern act of contrition – the tearful press conference – and have accepted their bans. Warner accepts that he is unlikely to ever play for Australia again. I’m not so sure – he’s only 31 and 12 months from now will still be one of the best opening batsmen in the world. Steve Smith is only 28 and will unquestionably be back in the team. Will he be captain again? I wouldn’t bet against it.

We can all argue about the length of the ban. As Michael Vaughan posted on Twitter, you suspect that Mr Lawyer and Mr QC were involved, and it is telling that neither player has sought to challenge their ban. And the dust seems to have settled remarkably quickly…

Are there any business lessons we can learn from Sandpapergate? I think there are two – and one lesson we can learn from Cricket Australia (not a sentence I thought I’d ever write) is the importance of acting decisively.

I’ve written previously about corporate cock-ups – United Airlines and Ryanair spring to mind – and one thing that unquestionably made the situation worse for the companies was that they firstly tried to defend that they’d done, and then they dithered. Even when they clearly didn’t have a leg to stand on, neither company would apologise with good grace. So Cricket Australia have acted swiftly, the players have accepted the bans and the focus of attention turns elsewhere.

The second lesson is that pressure makes you do stupid things. What on earth were Smith and Warner thinking? A disgraced businessman can disappear into the wilderness for a while and come back with a different company. Steve Smith cannot disappear and come back playing for Pakistan.

There is pressure in business every bit as much as there is pressure in sport – and just as in sport, it can lead to stupid decisions. For the entrepreneur, that pressure very often comes from loneliness – from having no-one to speak to about the stresses of running your own business. That is one of TAB’s great strengths: you are never alone. There is always someone there to speak to, always a friend who will allow you to release the pressure – and who will occasionally say, “Hang on, sport. That may not be the best decision you’ve ever made…”

More advice for Joe Root

Posted on by edreidyork


On July 22nd last year I posed a simple question: did Joe Root want to be just a very, very good cricketer – or did he want to become one of the game’s greats?

I received my answer the same day. Root scored 254 against Pakistan and England won the game by 330 runs.

A year on and – by the time you read this – Joe Root will have completed his first day as England captain. I’m tempted to question whether he’s the right the man for the job, just to make sure we win the game…

But at 26 Joe Root steps into a new role. No longer the cheeky young upstart in the dressing room, no longer ‘one of the lads:’ he’s the captain, the public face of English cricket.

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As so often, there are parallels between sport and business. In taking over the captaincy, Joe Root is simply mirroring what so many of us have done in our careers: been promoted, moved to a new company, even acquired a business. And we’ve had to a walk into a new office and simply say, “Good morning, I’m the boss.”

So in my unheralded – and sadly unpaid – role as The Secret Coach to the new skipper, let me pass on some advice, which applies in business just as much as it applies in sport.

You still have to justify your place in the side. As the owner of TAB York I had the pleasure of working with Suzanne Burnett, then MD of Castle Employment in Scarborough. Suzanne’s now handed over the reins to Kerry Hope, and last week in her ever-excellent blog Suzanne introduced Kerry as the new MD. This Q&A is relevant to all of us:

Q: Let’s just talk about those people [the team at Castle who didn’t know her] for a minute. How did you establish your credibility with them?

A: That’s a good point – and it’s something any manager going into a new company has to do: ‘show us your medals’ as they say in football. Maybe in recruitment that should be ‘show us your fees.’ I made absolutely certain that first and foremost I performed as a fee earner, so everyone could see that what I was saying – and the changes I was recommending – absolutely worked.

It’s the same for any new manager, for anyone taking over a company and it will be the same for Joe Root. If your performance can be measured, then you need to perform.

But you will have bad days. It’ll happen. Rooty will get a jaffa first nut and be back in the hutch for a duck.

What do you mean ‘you don’t understand?’ Sigh… The England captain will receive an unplayable delivery first ball and be back in the pavilion without scoring.

Sport and sales are equally unforgiving. The numbers are there for everyone to see. We all go through bad spells but the answer is simple. Keep believing in yourself, keep doing what you know is right and trust that the results will come – which they will. But you’re the leader now – everyone will be watching to see how you respond to a bad day: and how you respond determines how everyone else will respond.

Find a way to manage your stress. Well, no worries for Joe there. His son was born about six months ago. There are those of us, however, to whom a new baby would come as something of a surprise. That’s why I’m such an advocate of keeping fit, of spending time with friends and family and making sure you have interests outside work. All work and no play not only make Joe a dull boy, it makes him an inefficient, unproductive one as well.

Prepare to be lonely. Sad but true. We’ve said it many times on this blog but being an entrepreneur – or the captain – can be a lonely business. You get the accolades and you get to lift the trophy. But you also have to deal with the lows: as Joe Root will find, you’re not only managing yourself, you’re manging other people – and part of that will be delivering bad news. Saying to someone who’s been with you a long time, ‘I’m sorry, we’re going to make a change.’

There are a hundred and one other pieces of advice I could pass on – be there first in the morning, demand high standards of yourself and your team will automatically raise their standards – but lastly, and most importantly, lead. The job of a leader is to lead: to have conviction. To have the sheer bloody-minded conviction that his team will win, that his business will succeed.  After all, Joe, if you don’t believe, no-one else will…

Should We Worry about Germany?

Posted on by edreidyork


No, I haven’t travelled back to the 1930s. Or to extra time in 1966…

But in this era of increasing globalisation – and especially in the aftermath of the Brexit vote – ‘should we worry about Germany’ is a valid question. Specifically, should companies in North Yorkshire worry about European competitors poaching their top talent?

There was an interesting – and disturbing – article on the BBC business pages earlier this month. The gist of it, drawing extensively on quotes from the fund manager Neil Woodford, was that the UK is “appallingly bad” at funding tech start-ups. Small companies aren’t receiving the funding they need to grow: “We’ve been appallingly bad at giving these minnows the long-term capital they need,” said Woodford.

So if start-ups can’t get the funding and support they need in the UK, where will they go? And will talented young people become disillusioned and be tempted abroad?

There’s been no shortage of articles recently championing Germany – and Berlin in particular – as the likely new ‘start-up capital of Europe.’ ‘Berlin to usurp London’ as Geektime put it. No doubt about it: the coming years are going to be exciting for my TAB colleagues in Berlin: ‘Guten Morgen’ to Frank, Thomas and Ralf.

But it’s not just Berlin: the website EU-startups lists the top 15 start-up hubs in Europe: the UK has just one on the list and – post-Brexit – the situation won’t improve.

The anecdotal evidence is there as well: every friend I have with older, university educated children says the same thing. The children all voted Remain, and they all see their future in the UK as a part of Europe, not in the UK as an isolated country. “Two days after the vote he came home for the weekend and told me he wanted to live in Berlin,” as one person lamented to me.

So could the UK – and more pertinently could you – start to lose top talent to Europe?

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It’s not a danger we should under-estimate. Taking Berlin as an example, the arguments in favour of moving are well-rehearsed: the cost of renting around half what it is in London and a pool of talent from all over Europe. And Germany is by any standards a remarkably successful economy – a trade surplus of €20bn or thereabouts month after month after month. Some parts of the Eurozone may be struggling but the German ‘engine’ keeps on running.

And they’re enterprising: soon after the Brexit vote many of London’s start-up technology companies began receiving letters from Berlin. A promotional bus from Berlin drove round the streets of Shoreditch. As Berlin senator Cornelia Yzer put it: “We’re a vibrant city, we attract talent from all over the world. Maybe it’s the right location for a London based company … to make sure they’re part of the EU in future.”

London today, York tomorrow? After all, if you’re going to be part of ‘Generation Rent’ you might as well be paying a lot less rent…

I don’t think so.

York remains an outstanding place to start – and build – a business. As we’ll see at York Business Week in November, there’s a real buzz about the place, a real sense that anything is possible. In many ways the atmosphere in York reminds me of the almost tangible feeling of potential in Denver.

And York has plenty to offer start-ups with The Hub, The Catalyst and the business support available at the Eco Centre.

But talent is scarce – and in greater demand than it’s ever been. Some businesses in York have to fight against the ‘lure’ of Leeds, never mind Berlin!

So the onus – as ever – is on you. Another buck stops on your desk…

The best way to recruit and retain the best talent – whatever the competition – is to lead. That means setting out a clear direction for your company, involving everyone, delegating, recognising your team’s achievements and, above all, making sure they all buy into your vision.

Do that successfully and the burghers of Berlin can drive as many buses as they like round the York ring road!

What we can Learn from Baboons…

Posted on by edreidyork


We’ve all been on holiday. We’ve all experienced it.

For me, it comes around lunchtime on the third day…

You’ve finally hauled yourself off the sun lounger and wandered down to the beach restaurant. There’s a plate of calamari in front of you. A glass of cold beer at your elbow, the condensation running down the glass. The sun’s on your back. And suddenly you feel it.

You feel the muscles in your back relax. You feel the tension go out of your shoulders. At last, you’re relaxed. Stress? What stress?

But holidays end. You come home. Go back to work. Delete 300 e-mails. Drift back into the old routine. And before you know it, the muscles in your back are as knotted as they ever were…

So let me break off here, and consider two species which are closely connected: the baboon, and the British civil servant.

Robert Sapolsky of Stanford University is a primatologist. And every year, he forsakes the charms of California for the African jungle, where he studies baboons. Specifically, he studies their social structure and stress levels.

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Sir Michael Marmot is Professor of Public Health at University College London. He’s stayed rather closer to home, and conducted a 40 year study into the British civil servant, looking at 18,000 members of the service from the lowest new entrant right up to Sir Humphrey level.

Both studies come to the same conclusion: the higher up the social order you are, the less stress you suffer. Lower ranking baboons had higher heart rates and higher blood pressure than their leaders: their arteries contained more plaque, significantly increasing their risk of a heart attack.

Marmot’s findings mirrored those of Sapolsky. Men in lower employment grades were more likely to die prematurely: there was a ‘social gradient’ for mortality. Subsequent studies involving women revealed a similar pattern.

Why? Surely those at top of the tree – literally and figuratively – have bigger decisions to make? Protecting the troop, pleasing the new PM…

Apparently not: Sapolsky identified five factors that are responsible for the more stress/lower down the pecking order correlation:

  • You feel like you have no control
  • You’re not getting any predictive information – how bad is this going to be? How long will it last, and so on
  • You feel trapped
  • You interpret things as getting worse
  • And you’ve no support system or ‘shoulder to cry on’

And now we’re coming closer to home. Most people reading this blog will be the top baboon, the alpha male or female in their organisation. But every single one of us has known that feeling of not being in control of our business, of feeling trapped, of not knowing how things will turn out – and of not having anyone who truly understands what the problem is. And therein lies the stress – and the inherent dangers that come with it.

I think I’ve done a reasonable job of eliminating stress in my life, but on the third day of the holiday I can still feel the muscles in my back loosening. Much as I like that moment, I’d prefer it didn’t happen. So one of my key goals for the rest of this year is to remove even more stress from my life: given the responsibilities I’m taking on, that’s not going to be easy – but I’m determined to do it.

As a starting point, I’ve just written down all the factors that cause me stress: there are six of them. So here’s a firm commitment: by the end of this year I’ll have the list down to three. And I challenge you to do the same. Make your list, and commit to reducing it by 50% over the next 4½ months.

…And by all means share it with your fellow Board members, the ultimate ‘shoulder to cry on.’ Whatever you’ve written down, it’ll be mirrored around the table. Much more importantly, though, the solutions will also be around the TAB table –in the knowledge, insight and experience of your fellow baboons…

Are You Selling Sugared Water?

Posted on by edreidyork


Last week I was reflecting on the American Presidential race and the nature of leadership:

The title doesn’t make you a leader: neither does the biggest office or the reserved parking space. What makes a leader is the ability to bring your ideas to life – to paint a picture of the future your team can see and believe.

Let me continue that theme this week – and take a more detailed look at the one quality all great leaders have in common. Vision.

We live at a time when the future is more uncertain than ever, whether it’s economically (slowdown in China, Brexit), politically (US election, tension everywhere you can think of), socially (refugee crisis) – or the constant and ever-faster pace of change in technology.

Predicting the future is almost impossible.

And yet there are some astonishing success stories in business. The famous quote from Robert Kennedy is more relevant than ever:

There are those that look at things the way they are and ask why? I dream of things that never were and ask ‘why not?’

So did Mark Zuckerberg when he wondered if his Harvard dating app couldn’t go a step or two further.

So did Pierre Omidyar when he wondered if there wasn’t a better way of buying and selling and founded eBay.

So did Travis Kalanick and Garrett Camp when they wondered if the traditional taxi business might be due for a shake-up and founded Uber.

Jonathan Swift – taking a break from Gulliver’s Travels – famously wrote that ‘vision is the art of seeing things invisible.’ That’s what Zuckerberg & Co did: they saw things that were invisible to everyone else.

And that’s what Steve Jobs did in 1983 when he asked John Sculley, then the President of Pepsi-Cola, his famous question: Do you want to sell sugared water for the rest of your life, or do you want to come with me and change the world?

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Let me pause, and look at the other side of the coin for a moment. Let’s take one example of leaders without vision. I’m prepared to wager that the vast majority of people reading this blog have owned a Nokia mobile phone. How many of us own Nokias now?

Ten years ago the word Nokia was synonymous with the mobile phone. Does anyone know what the company does today? Did the company’s leaders have a vision of the future? I seriously doubt it. As the Harvard Business Review said, “they were acting like leaders – reassuring, calm, confident, giving fine speeches – [but they] were not being leaders.” And they woke up one morning to find everyone holding an iPhone or the latest Samsung.

What are the implications of all this for our businesses in North Yorkshire? That in our changing world leadership and vision is more important than ever. That while you may well make money selling sugared water, real and lasting success comes from seeing – and realising – your vision. To quote the Business Review again, “a leader’s fundamental role isn’t merely to perform the same tasks as yesterday, just more efficiently: it is to re-define the idea of performance entirely.”

The role of the leaders isn’t to take power, it’s to give power. It’s to create a vision, a purpose, that’s so exciting that your team can’t help but buy into it – then you give them the power to achieve. And suddenly you’re no longer selling sugared water – you’re changing part of the world. As the old cliché goes, you’re not predicting your future, you’re creating it.

…And as another old cliché goes, ‘All work and no play makes Ed a dull boy.’ So with the half-term holidays looming the blog will be taking a break next week as we head for the ski slopes. I’ll be back on Friday 26th looking at a darker facet of leadership – coping emotionally when the ship is heading for the rocks…

The Great Communicator

Posted on by edreidyork


You may have noticed a little excitement on the other side of the pond, specifically in Iowa. The starting gun’s been fired and the 2016 Presidential race is officially under way.

So a quick quiz question. Name the three Republican front runners and the two leading Democrats. Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton. That’s easy. That old guy – Bernie something? The young one from Florida. And Ted something? Didn’t he win in Iowa?

Yes he did. Ted Cruz is the one you’re trying to think of. He beat The Donald and Marco Rubio. And Hillary beat Bernie Sanders. Just. 701 precincts to 697.

You’ll soon know everything there is to know about them – because on November 8th, one of them will become arguably the most powerful person in the world (subject to a small discussion with Vladimir Putin and Xi Jinping). Barack Obama will voluntarily give up power and one of the five mentioned will find him or herself sitting behind the desk where the buck most emphatically stops. POTUS 45 will be in office.

I’m fascinated by American politics for two reasons. First of all I now go to Denver every year – and thanks to The Alternative Board I think of a great many Americans as friends. The second reason is simple: how can such an energetic, vibrant, enterprising country produce such consistently underwhelming candidates?

I was born in 1973 – more or less a year before Woodward, Bernstein and Deep Throat finally put paid to Tricky Dicky. He was followed by Gerald Ford and Jimmy Carter. Then came ‘the Great Communicator’ – to be followed by the Bush/Clinton years and the current incumbent.

How many of them have impressed me? Probably only one: Ronald Reagan.

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Was he the brightest President of my lifetime? Absolutely not.

Did he have the best grasp of policy and foreign affairs? No way.

But was Reagan the best leader? Without question.

As I’ve written many times on this blog, leadership isn’t being the best, the smartest or the one with the most knowledge. Leadership is about leading. It’s about saying ‘that’s where we’re going’ and getting your team – or the American people – to follow you.

I’m always struck by the sharp Democrat/Republican divide when I visit the States. Changing allegiance seems a much more difficult step to take than in this country. And yet Reagan’s folksy style – and his ability to capture the spirit of the US – easily bridged the divide.

Reagan gave the impression that he wanted to be President because he believed; because – like Margaret Thatcher – he’d had a moment when he’d realised, ‘No-one else is going to do this: it has to be me.’

Too many politicians since – on both sides of the Atlantic – have sought to lead for all the wrong reasons. To mis-quote JFK, for what leadership will bring to them, not what they can bring to the people they seek to lead.

The parallels with business are obvious. Everyone running their own business has had their own ‘it has to be me’ moment: the moment when they knew they had to act. And as we all know – and as Reagan said after the Challenger disaster: “the future doesn’t belong to the faint-hearted: it belongs to the brave.”

As this week’s title suggests, Reagan’s effectiveness as a speaker lead to him being known as ‘The Great Communicator.’ As Ken Khachigian, one of his former speechwriters says, what brought him the name was “his ability to educate his audience, to bring his ideas to life, by using illustrations and word pictures to make his arguments vivid.”

And that’s an exact parallel with business leadership. The title doesn’t make you a leader: neither does the biggest office or the reserved parking space. What makes a leader is the ability to bring your ideas to life – to paint a picture of the future your team can see and believe. And then they’ll follow you anywhere…

Ignorance is a Choice

Posted on by edreidyork


I don’t frequent football fans’ forums very much – as a Newcastle supporter it’s not a sensible way to spend Saturday evening. But you know how it is, sometimes you can’t resist… And what did I find after we snatched a draw from the jaws of victory against Crystal Palace? An important business lesson for us all.

If you’re not a regular visitor to football chat rooms – and let me congratulate you on that particular life choice – I should tell you that all the fans have fictitious names and ‘signatures.’ Mostly these signatures question the manager’s competence or the owner’s sanity, but one of them ran much deeper than that. “Right now,” it read, “Ignorance is a choice.”

And for every reader of this blog, that’s true.

Let’s do a simple test. How far is it from Vladivostok to Delhi? Starts stop watch on iPhone…

It’s 5,088km – and it took me 18.53 seconds to find that out, including the time it took me to type the query.

Maybe something more philosophical? Why is it wrong to steal? In 0.31 seconds Google offers me 43m results.

So I’m inclined to agree with my pal on the forum. Ignorance is a choice. But sadly from a business point of view, it’s a choice that a lot of us make. The mass of men not only live lives of quiet desperation: all too often they live lives of quiet complacency as well. And if you’re running a business in this rapidly changing world, that’s dangerous.

Let me ask you two questions:

  • When did you last challenge yourself intellectually?
  • When did you last feel out of your depth in a discussion, at a conference or in a meeting?

It’s human nature: we all like to feel comfortable: we all like to feel in control – but very often we’re only learning when we’re slightly out of our depth.

One of the best business tips I’ve read recently is to take yourself off to a conference or a meeting that’s well outside your comfort zone. Maybe it’s programming or SEO or mobile apps: you’ll be surprised at a) how much of it is relevant to your business and b) how much you learn.

I find as I get older that I like learning more and more: it’s one of the bonuses I never expected from TAB. I know far more about management techniques, different leadership styles and – above all – different ways of coping with the trials, tribulations and joys that running your own business brings.

One thing we can be sure of: the world will not stand still and the pace of technological change will continue to increase. If you don’t carry on learning you’re going to be left behind. Ignorance is a choice and unfortunately it’s going to be a choice that will put your business at risk.

One of the great strengths of TAB is that it allows you to go into areas where you’re not comfortable; where you don’t know everything. I’m constantly amazed at the collective wisdom round a Board table and I’m constantly gratified by the discussions: it’s fantastic to hear successful people say, ‘All I know about this is that I don’t know. Can someone help me?’

It’s a characteristic of good leaders that they’re always willing to learn: rest assured that if you’re going to run a successful business over the next ten years a willingness to learn and to go on learning will be absolutely crucial.

To paraphrase the famous Robert Kennedy quote, successful leaders won’t be the people that see things as they are and ask ‘why?’ They’ll be the ones who see things as they could be and ask ‘why not?’

Don’t Make the Mistakes Moyesie Made

Posted on by edreidyork


There is a story – and whether it was originally true or not doesn’t matter as it’s now accepted fact – that on the way back from the 2-0 mauling by Olympiakos David Moyes was spotted by the Manchester United players reading Jim Collins’ book, Good to Great.

Footballers being teenage boys much sarcastic comment was passed and the The Chosen One’s stock fell even further – and as we now know, it wasn’t long before Moyesie was clutching his P45.

The Daily Mail had plenty of fun with the story as well, pointing out that ‘achieve BHAGs – Big, Hairy, Audacious Goals’ – didn’t mean signing Marouane Fellaini and that Moyes took ‘be a hedgehog, not a fox’ rather too far and had seriously prickly relationships with several players.

But hang on. Good to Great is a bestselling book. It’s stood the test of time. It can’t be all bad – and it isn’t. ‘Be a hedgehog, not a fox’ is just another way of saying keep it simple: focus on one thing at a time. And if there’s one characteristic that anyone who’s built a successful business has it’s exactly that. They identify the single most important thing they need to do and they focus on it until it’s done. And then they move on to number two.

No, David Moyes’ mistake wasn’t reading the book: it was letting his players – and a Daily Mail journalist – see him reading the book. In the laddish culture of a football club – especially one looking for a scapegoat – that was never going to be a good idea.

So what other mistakes did Moyes make? And what can we learn from the most spectacular management failure of the last nine months?

• If you’re a leader, you’ve got to be seen to lead and you have to display confidence. ‘Talk the talk’ and ‘walk the walk’ aren’t my favourite business phrases but that’s exactly what David Moyes failed to do. If you’re the leader of your team the first thing they want from you is confidence and belief

• …And the fact that you know where you’re going. David Moyes mumbled excuse after excuse and constantly gave the impression he was making it up as he went along. I’ll admit that he wasn’t helped in this by some ridiculous decisions from the Board but did he ever look and behave like someone with a long-term plan? No.

• Don’t sack the people who know what they’re doing. Almost Moyes’ first act was to replace all the Manchester United backroom staff with his own staff from Everton – a backroom team which had a proud record of winning nothing at all. If you’re going to bring in someone from outside, they have to be credible: your staff have to be able to look at the new person’s track record and say, “OK, I can see why he did that.”

• Finally, don’t have favourites. If you’ve read The Secret Footballer you’ll be aware of the phrase ‘the boss’s son’ – the player who never seems to be dropped, irrespective of how badly he plays. You will have to argue long and hard to convince me that Wayne Rooney’s five year, gazillion pound contract didn’t have a serious effect on the team’s morale. Even if a member of your team is completely and utterly out-of-this-world, business, like football, remains a team sport.

Next week I’ll be looking at promises – no, not promises like ‘Don’t worry, you’ve got a six year contract’ – and the part they have to play in business. In the meantime if you think there are any other lessons we can learn from the Moyes fiasco I’d be delighted to hear them…