Author: David Physick

I’m as mad as hell

Complain to the top of the organisation. After all, a complaint is a gift to a service oriented company!

A credible role model?

Brian Cranston won this year’s Best Actor Olivier Award for his role of Howard Beale in Network.  In recognition, I thought his infamous mantra, “I’m as mad as hell and I’m not going to take this anymore!” should fire us up not to accept poor customer service.  Otherwise, you have to bite your tongue and meekly walk away.

Rant and rave

Not long after his appointment as CEO of Barclays Bank, the “Montreal Marauder” to give Matthew Barrett his sobriquet, remarked in an interview with the Independent newspaper in August 2001, “The consumer, whatever they are buying, is long suffering. A service revolution is a little overdue. I find the legendary politeness of the English to be not in their self-interest. I think they should be ranting and raving at the service they get, wherever they are getting it, banks included. The consumer cuts business too much slack in this country.”

Why did Matt mention only the English? Why didn’t he include the other home nations?  From Scotland, if speaking today, he could have chosen the Simpsons characterisation of a Scot in the form of Orkney-born “Groundskeeper Willie”.

Alternatively, that of Robert Carlyle’s foul-mouthed, violent Begbie in Trainspotting.  I’ll leave you to search Google for comparable examples from Wales and Northern Ireland.

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The SME leaders’ dilemma: buying personal development

I know I need development but will I make a good buying decision?

Were you working for someone somewhere and frustrated at how you saw the business being run?  Did you think you could do better and so struck out on your own? You recognise you could be a better leader but are concerned about making a poor buying decision for your development.

Your business is doing OK.  It employs a dozen or more people incurring a monthly salary bill of the order of some tens of thousands of pounds.  Yet, you have a lingering sense of frustration that your people are not doing what you need them to do.

Is the boot now on the other foot with some of your people feeling like you did that you could do better.  The likelihood is that like you were they are probably your better performers and could more easily find a job elsewhere.  Lose them and your business will suffer a marked dent in its performance.  It is not that they are irreplaceable (no one is; you can lose someone to an accident or a lottery win), but they are effective and efficient workers.  What can you do differently as their leader to improve the odds that they will stay?

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In an age of universal deceit, telling the truth is a revolutionary act

I always thought this quote was by George Orwell, engraved somewhere on the walls of Big Brother’s Ministry of Truth.  But apparently not; many of the on-line quotation sites cite it as unattributed.  Whatever is the truth about the quotation concerning truth, I like it!

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Danger, someone’s said, “I love my work!”

Does ‘love’ belong in the workplace? Does it make a positive contribution?

How to be Good at Work

I have had the privilege of knowing Professor Roger Steare for a number of years; he describes himself as The Corporate Philosopher.  His professorship is at CASS Business School.  I admire his work about corporate ethics and values.  It is more important today than when it was started.

He is producing a “live-book” called “How to be Good at Work”.  Roger wrote the original set of chapters.  Subsequently, through a “commons approach”, other people have contributed additional articles and commentary.  As a result of some general remarks I shared with Roger, he asked me to produce a more specific article , which I did.  While he liked the content, my style was too different to his and other contributors for him to accept it.  I didn’t have the time or, admittedly, the inclination to change it.  However, in view of Roger’s positive feedback about the content of my commentary, I thought I would use this Blog to push it out into the public domain.  The topic of love seems fitting for the week before Christmas.

Hopefully, having read my piece, it will prompt you to look at “How to be Good at Work”, contact Roger and expand the conversation he has started.

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Indispensability, passion and goodness

In our continuous striving to achieve more, do we risk considering ourselves indispensable and seek undue reward rather than give for the greater good?

Many moons ago, I worked on the project that conceived, developed and launched the world’s first debit card.  The initiative was led by a terrific individual, Bill Hislop, now sadly passed away.  I was reminded of his verve and vitality as a leader by the background that appeared on booting up Windows 10 earlier this week.

I remember Bill speaking to a group of new graduate entrants and showing two cartoons.  The first showed a climber atop a mountain peak with the caption, “It’s now how far you’ve come…”  The second showed a broader perspective of the landscape with the climber standing on what could be considered a mere hillock looking out to a Mordor-like mountain range; the caption read, “… it’s how far there is to go.”

The background picture off Windows was this:

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Three nodes of goodness

There are decent and honourable people in our world who are doing superb work. Let me tell you about a few people I respect and admire for their positive endeavour, driving change and celebrating success. In some ways, this is an advertorial for their work.

Making silk purses out of sows’ ears

Recent articles from me have concerned values and being “flummoxed” at what I see happening around me.  Combined, I feel even greater disquiet at the accelerating pace by which our world appears to be catapulting itself in a hand cart into hell.  Contextually, this is the “sow’s ear”.

I thought I should try and find something positive to say in this contribution to remind myself that there are decent and honourable people in our world who are doing superb work.  So, let me tell you about a few people, i.e. the “silk purses”, I know.  I respect and admire them for their positive endeavour, driving change and celebrating success.  In some ways, this is an advertorial for their work.

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Exam season: prevention not cure

School blackboard
© | Dreamstime Stock Photos

It’s that time of year when a good proportion of the population works itself into a state of agitation.  It’s school and university exam season; time to judge the learning you’ve learned.  I guess almost every reader of this blog will have taken an exam at some time and/or shepherded their son(s) or daughter(s) through doing so.  They will have a broad array of memories about the experience.  Does our collective recollection indicate we were affected by the same degree of anxiety that seems to prevail today?  Or, is this one of those situations glimpsed in the rear-view mirror that appears smaller than it really is?  Were we scared, short of sleep and forgot the single most important coaching line ever uttered, “Read the [insert appropriate profanity] question”?

However, is there a deeper, more important question to pose at this time?  That is, “Is our approach to education fit for purpose?”  Have we forgotten what makes sound pedagogy; what represents real learning as opposed to mere information transfer, which like water finds its own course in and immediately out of someone’s head?

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British Airways – can it ever be again the “world’s favourite airline”?

What’s gone wrong this weekend? How effectively has BA handled this scorching hot potato?

In a past life, someone told me Richard Branson once remarked in the early days of Virgin Atlantic, “We’re in the entertainment business, but at 35,000 feet”.  I can’t now find that remark attributed to Branson on any of the quotation web-sites. However, it came back to me over this weekend as I read and watched the news reports concerning the unending, torrid situation at British Airways.

What entertainment are they now in?  Farce, I suggest.

It is a long, long way since the glory days of Lord King and Colin Marshall when BA claimed to be the “world’s favourite airline” – watch the famous 1989 advert at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jxs106rp5RQ

What’s gone wrong this weekend?  How effectively has BA handled this scorching hot potato?

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Flummoxed

“I’m flummoxed about why we’re hugely rewarding our organisational leaders to do what appears to me to be the wrong things”.

A favourite word of a US-based friend and business associated is “flummoxed”.  I rather like the word myself.  If you are as old as I am, you may recall a Monty Python sketch in which they attributed the characteristic of “woodiness” to certain words.  The was a positive appellation.  Flummoxed is a woody word.

I am flummoxed with what I see going on around me.  Although I am a Liverpudlian by birth, I will avoid our natural inclination to ignore the golden rule not to speak about politics and religion.  I am not going to slam-dunk popularism, nationalism or any other contemporary “-ism”, which suffix immediately makes a word “tinny” (see http://montypython.50webs.com/scripts/Series_4/23.htm).

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Leadership is a contact sport

Leadership is a contact sport. In 2017, more than ever before, as leaders let’s invest in our people through the time we spend with them and the effectiveness of that time we spend together.

I came across the statement forming the title of this post towards the end of 2016.  It is attributed to Marshall Goldsmith, who is an American leadership coach.  I have paired it with another quotation, which was made by President Eisenhower, “You don’t lead people by hitting them over the head.  That is assault, not leadership.”

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