Gareth Malone has vision

There were so many “hits” searching for “Gareth Malone” that I thought I’d better write something.

Gareth’s series on BBC “The Choir” was so good that I didn’t want to detract from it.

It’s about great leadership.

The thing that stands out for me is Gareth’s vision.

He takes a motley group of military wives. Many of them have not sung in years. A few months later they are performing in front of the Queen at the Royal Albert Hall.

Thousands were there to remember the Fallen at the Annual Festival of Remembrance and millions were watching on TV. It was an incredible thing, moving, beautiful, profound.

Gareth passes the credit to these incredible women. Women who man the home front while their men fight in a foreign field. Housed in isolating communities of services’ families it’s a painful and long vigil.

But Gareth himself makes something very special happen here.

He starts with nothing, ok a good reputation if you know him, but I mean no choir, no professional singers, just plenty of potential which no-one can see except him.

Gareth demonstrates several key aspects of leadership in these programmes. He believes in people without a track record. He spots talent that has virtually no voice.

He nurtures confidence in the troops, individually and as a team.

Reluctant heroines become solo artists in a few months, faltering fears being replaced by strength and self-respect.

But Gareth’s vision is his greatest gift. He sees what could be.

Most leaders have a “vision” even if they think they don’t think they have. It’s where they think the organisation is going.

For some the vision will be ‘staying put’, i.e. going nowhere. Some leaders think you have to keep it from the people, but not Gareth.

Gareth does vision like going up a mountain. Summit after summit is aimed for and reached. It works.

First he gets the military wives to sing to a bunch of blokes. Then it’s to the people of local town, Barnstaple, then it’s to the Royal Military Academy and finally it’s the Royal Albert Hall.

Each mini-climb is attempted one step at a time. Many times they think they won’t make it.

But they do and it was brilliant.

His skill is taking people at a pace they can manage. He doesn’t run too far ahead or give up when the going gets tough.

This was a lot more than singing, although the music was good. This was about inspiring a group of people sometimes one-by-one. It was about showing them what they could achieve for themselves, for their families, and for their country.

It was about spotting potential in every member, nurturing them through tears and joy and finally standing back and letting them take the credit.

I think that’s leadership.

Jeremy Clarkson rude and offensive?

I used to like him. Until he was rude about the car I drive.

Now I don’t respect his views at all…

Um, not logical is it?

Now he’s been very beastly about people who go on strike.

But that’s what he’s paid to do.

Actually that’s what we all want him to do when we vote for his shows by watching them. Jeremy Clarkson is an incredibly successful entertainer.

Let’s not kid ourselves that he is a serious motoring correspondent. He’s an entertainer pure and simple.

So why all the upset, why all the anger?

I certainly make no apology for his comments which were ugly at best.

Trouble is we are all upset at the moment and we are taking it out on him. Sacking him or making him say sorry will make not one jot of difference to our pensions, or the lack of them.

But it will make us feel better.  For a while at least.

BBC’s clip showing Clarkson’s remarks on The One Show

Old heads on young shoulders

BBC’s Young Apprentice kicks off the 2011 series just like any other. The difference is: the candidates are all about 16.

Are these young pretenders any better or any worse than the usual assortment of desperate hopefuls?

Skip the first 45 minutes if you have already seen incompetence at making and selling ice cream (this week’s task).

I recommend fast-forwarding to the Boardroom for a remarkable display of exaggeration and in-fighting; of economics and economy with the truth. Very much like the senior show in fact.

I hesitate to call the senior show “adult”.  There is as much adult behaviour in this crew as their older counterparts demonstrate, more so perhaps!

Striking was their ability to present themselves well. Especially team leader Harry H.

Harry possesses a composure worthy of someone 20 years older. Stepping up to team leader, but losing, he survived the Boardroom experience intact. I don’t underestimate just how stressful the “firing sequence” is for anyone.

The girls won because they overpriced the boys. In the quest for profit, their far greater margin pipped the boys’ result, whilst James-the-Economist McCullagh failed to understand the economics of pricing ice creams at the start of a hot day.

James also managed to annoy Lord Sugar on Week 1. No mean achievement.

But Mahamed Awale was the fall guy in the end. I sensed he never made an impression on his team, his voice not really being heard. It says as much about them as it does about him.

Lord Sugar gives the impression he is less cynical about these folk as compared with candidates on the older version of the show. It is certainly impressive to hear of their talents.

But the character traits, ok flaws, are just the same as far as I can see.

Don’t underestimate the young.

 

High staff turnover?

“People move on don’t they? Plenty more fish in the sea.”

1. Losing one or two key people is normal, expected even.

“We offer good prospects here. It’s their problem if they want to move on.”

2. Lost half of your key people?

“We bring on talent here”, I hear you say, “no-one is indispensible. I’m not sure they did that much really”.

I beg to differ.

I think you’ve got a bit of a problem.

3. Lost most of your team?

YOU ARE THE PROBLEM!

Get some advice.

About Dr Steve Lewis

Do you believe in people?

I fully understand if you don’t, because people let you down.

But if we want to lead people we have to start believing in them.

Sometimes it takes a real act of faith. Or maybe it’s instinct.

After all there may not be much evidence that a person could be something more than they are.

What’s more we could invest a whole lot of time and energy, money even, and they could just walk away.

These are all risks of the people development business.

Why bother? Why take the risk?

Well… no development, no leadership.

No leadership, no improvement.

When we don’t improve we regress.

So step one is to start to believe in people.

Step 2 is to start investing in them.

The harvest is more of a buy-product of this process. The reward is their development. Their development is its own reward.

As we become net givers, investors-in-people we become more.

It’s all about exams

If you’ve just had results you could be forgiven for thinking it was.

And of course exams are important.

But is there more to life than your A level grades? What happens if you don’t have any?

Will you make it without a degree?

A few years ago one in six people went to University. Now it’s more like 50% of us.

A cynical view would be that this is one way of shortening the dole queue.

With the increase in the number of people “qualifying” in something, more than ever it’s important to look at whether this is enough for a young person.

Personally I don’t think it is nearly enough. It’s not much help to an older person either.

Wherever I have worked there are people with good grades, sometimes with lots of them. But “attitude” and the quality you demonstrate, is far more important to an employer.

“Can and will this person do the job for me?” is the main question.

Exams don’t really test this as far as I can see.

So if you struggle with exams there is plenty of hope for you. If you’re prepared to work hard.

And if you possess a stack of A Grades, or is it A Stars, realise that this is only a portion of the picture. Sure you need to know your stuff and this is a good start, but you need attitude too and also experience and there isn’t a course you can do for this!

You also need inspiration if you want to achieve anything out there in the real world.

Say you want to be a song writer. You do a song-writing course, get the degree. But you still have to find the words and the tune yourself.

Paradoxically the inspiration for good songs and for much else comes out of adversity, from failure. In short, inspiration and even success comes from the other end of the see-saw.

So if the grades weren’t everything you hoped for, don’t despair, far from it. Make the best of what you have and more will be coming your way.

Facebook vs Linked-In who wins?

Does Business understand Facebook?

Is Facebook really just a social network for personal use?

Can we distinguish our personal “personas” from our “professional” personas?

My chief executive told me: “in business you have to sell yourself.” Linked-In is certainly about this in some ways. To complete your profile you have to fill in your education, school, uni, degrees etc.

So did you put the ones you failed on there? No, neither did I!

But in the world of Facebook, we are who we are. Narcissistic, goodly, self-centred, friendly, ranting.

Business is nervous about being so up-front. What happens if people knew how poor we really were?

But maybe, just maybe, our clients would like us better if they weren’t disappointed so often. We could save them a lot of time, and our own wasted effort, if we were more open.

And this is what Facebook brings, I think. But it really doesn’t matter what I think, it’s what you think collectively and individually which will influence me and which one I use most.

So what do you think?

The cost of leadership

Leadership is giving. Giving more than you get back.

Sure there are returns, great returns, but don’t count on it.

Yes they may owe you, but they won’t always know that.

Leadership is serving, being enough for them.

Leadership is its own reward, a gift.

It’s tough being a Dragon!

It’s hard to believe how few investment opportunities there are on BBC’s Dragons’ Den.

Sure there are plenty of hopeless cases, but this exactly mirrors real life. The difference is that in the Den you get a short, sharp shock if your pitch is not up to scratch.

There were only a couple of successful pitches this week (Series 9 believe-it-or-not, ep 2).

The stand out couple for me were Liz and Alan Colleran. They had already sold TEN THOUSAND caravan-memory-foam-stiched-into-a-duvet-with-one-side-sewn-up-to-keep your-back-warm.

A very good idea it was too, for anyone wanting to improve their night’s sleep on holiday.

But the main thing was that they actually had a pretty good business already. The only problem is they were hopeless with the numbers.

All the Dragons were OUT except for Hilary. It’s hard to understand how the Collerans could actually even get onto the show without an idea of what their P & L looked like. It was embarrassing.

Again, that’s real life in business. Who cares about the numbers anyway? Well someone had to, particularly if it’s going to be her money being invested.

New Dragon Hilary obviously felt her people would be able to get a grip on this, and get a grip on the huge costs to increase profits. She invested.

Sometimes your head can get in the way of your heart. Instinctively you know it’s a good product, but the others were saying in effect “How dare they come in here and not know their figures!”

Businesses, whether they are our clients or we invest in them, or both, are hardly ever totally tidy. If they were they wouldn’t need us or the Dragons anyway!

Some of the other pitches were hilarious. I admired the raw cheek of cheeky chappy Glen Harden, who candidly admitted he had no plan at all.

Glen, sounding like he had entered for a bet, got all the Dragons interested in his tan-in-a-fake-six-pack idea. Glen’s a skillful salesman and nearly pulled it off.

But not quite. Clever stuff though and compulsive viewing!

Stock market crash – bored now?

Have markets had their day?

Have we become immune to news about another massive “adjustment”? Remember Black Wednesday and what a big deal that was?

And how can a company be worth 10% less than yesterday? Sure I can understand it once in a very long while, but these adjustments happen with increasing frequency.

It does make you wonder if market valuations are 50% fluff, 50% (or more) driven by speculators and not having too much relation to underlying performance.

Is is that markets have become the home of cynicism, no place for the unwary?

More the scarier, if you are lucky enough to have a pension, it will probably be invested here, on the stock market.

Hoping for 3% growth in a year? How about a 3% drop in a day?

Looking at it in a different way, is the world becoming a bit more transparent? Or rather, are we all beginning to see through the smoke and mirrors of corporate and political hype a bit more quickly?

I think so.