Budgie smugglers

Is it only me…but how can I be inspired when it is out of season. I know that like me, and despite my cynical intentions, you will have enjoyed watching people perform citius, altius, fortius, through the Olympic and Paralympic SportsFest. Indeed I would go further than enjoy. I have been inspired. And as the Olympic caravan packs up its Big Tent and moves on to Rio, I have taken to heart Mr Seb’s ambition and been inspired. I am the legacy. And now I aim for two or three early morning visits per week to my local swimming pool while on my way into my place of employment for a pre-dawn thrash up and down the pool thirty or so times with some very fit superannuated wrinklies. But I am being let down and Mr Seb’s legacy ambition is being thwarted not by the Two Caesar’s policies or by the age of austerity but by Marks and Spencer, my fashion retailer of choice. For to enable to me to perform at my peak and to optimise my performance just like Mr Hoy, Mr Farah and Ms Ennis, I need the right equipment, in my case a stylish, flattering and performance optimising pair of budgie smugglers. Or indeed anything suitable for my aquatic thrash. And so you can imagine my chagrin on enquiring in branch and even looking online to discover that, in the words of one of Twiggy’s little helpers, ‘this was not the right time for selling swimming trunks’. Now maybe it’s only me but it is the small details like that which will undermine Mr Seb’s legacy aspiration. How many people are going to wait until it is the right season before they can fulfil their inspiration? The momentum we have all paid billions to generate will be lost. Messrs Marks and Spencer should surely have anticipated a rush for athletic equipment post the games and strained every sinew to ensure that their shelves and stock cupboards were stuffed to overflowing with sporting clothing for every shape and size. And who says that swimming has a season anyway? It is clearly possible to swim throughout the year as indeed it is well and truly possible for folks to go away at any time of the year. It is not decreed anywhere as far as I know, and I don’t think even Europe has got round to standardising this yet, that you can only swim or even sell swimming gear in certain months. And I even think it possible that you can go on holiday to sunnier climes at any time of the year. Twiggy and her supermodel pals may be cavorting about on our TV screens dressed to the nines in M&S outfits but for me the lack of attention to detail being shown by their employers is seriously hampering my preparations for 2016. And it is bad business for them. If anyone knows where I can find a pair of budgie smugglers for the fashion conscious and athletic aspirant, please do tell. Have a great week. Sis felix. Et sis fortunatus.

And the winner is...

Is it only me…but I don’t like to see good losers.

Like many of you, and despite my cynical reservations, I have been transfixed by the athletes at this summer’s Olympics and Paralympic Games. They have been magnificent, no matter what flag they have wrapped themselves in.

I was asked the other day what I thought of the tantrums and displays of bad losership being displayed by people like Mark Cavendish who blamed everyone but himself for his failure to win gold; Oscar Pistorius complaining that his legs (false) were too short when compared to the winner; and Jason Cundy who threw a real hissy fit just because he was disqualified and not allowed to re-start. I am sure there are other examples of bad sportsmanship on display through the sports fest but these were the most high profile examples.

Was this a case of the athletes believing the hype about them? Were they becoming as big headed and as ego driven as footballers? Was bad losing becoming endemic?

Now it might only be but I like a bad loser. In my book there is no such thing as a good loser-you are still a loser.

It infuriated me to see athletes coming 7th, 8th, last, coming up to the camera all smiles and laughs and telling us all they tried their best but it wasn’t good enough on the day but they have had a wonderful experience.
‘You might have had a wonderful day, love, but you are still a LOSER’, I scream at the TV, ‘is it any wonder you are 7th with that attitude?’

Losing should hurt. It should be the most pain you will ever experience outside child birth or wisdom tooth extraction without anaesthetic. Losing should sear itself across every fibre in your body. And it is the avoidance of pain that should drive you onto succeed.

And that is why I admire the likes of Cavendish, Pistorius and Cundy. They hate losing. They want to win. And that is what makes them ultimately successful.

They are no egotists. They are not big headed. They are not arrogant. They are winners. They are driven to succeed. They don’t take part to come 7th or 8th. They compete to be first. And I wish more of our (losing) athletes came across like them.

And remember this-there is no 'i' in team but there is in winner.

Have a great week. Win lots. Win strong.

Sis felix. Et sis fortunatus.

5 Ring Circus

No I didn't drown and now I am back and set yet again to entertain and provoke you. And many thanks for all the messages of concern and worry.

And where to better to start than with a sideways look at the juggernaut that is the London 2012 Olympic Games or The Coe Ego Trip as I like to call it.

Is it only me...but I always think families should stick together.

With only days to go now before The Coe Ego Trip reaches its destination and I have just had the misfortune to spend a couple of days down in our capital city. And you would not believe the traffic chaos. Yes I know there is always chaos on the roads down there but this is far far worse.

Mile after mile of road capacity through this working city have been cordoned off for the privilege use of members of the so called Olympic Family. And woe betides any mere mortal who should inadvertently stray into one of these lanes for should this happen Coe’s Goons will come and get you.

Now the really galling thing about these so called Zil Lanes is, that while the poor sods who are having to pay for The Ego Trip crowd themselves and their vehicles into less and less space, the reserved lanes are for the most part lie empty and devoid of London 2012 BMWs.

Where is the sense in this?

I do accept that we do not want the athletes and other officials snared in some of London's infamous traffic jams for without these people there would be no games. Though why sponsors and the great and good of the Olympic Family cannot slum it with the rest of us is beyond me.

However I have a better suggestion than closing down roads and streets except for the privileged few.

Maybe it is only me but I always thought that families should be together. Families which play and eat together stay together. Why do we not apply this dictum to the Olympic Family?

Instead of causing massive disruption to the lives of ordinary people going about their business by transporting the Olympic Family around and through London, surely it would have made much greater logistical sense to site the travellers closer to the venues. This would have mitigated the need for travel considerably.

In other words accommodate all the Family within the Olympic Village.

Sure I know this would mean that the Head Honchos of the Family and their hangers on would need to forego the 5 star luxury of their grand hotels and slum it with the athletes, but they would be with their Family and as they say blood is thicker than water and family is family.

It is a real surprise that I was not asked to organise the games.

Have a great week. Let the Games commence.

Sis felix. Et sis fortunatus.

Can I see your passport?

Is it only me but...we do seem to have one law for the rich and another for the poor.

Did you see the Olympic torch arrive in Britain last week? I know it was a lot of fuss about nothing and you can bet that the 5 Ring Circus soon to kick off will be the subject of many words of wisdom over the coming weeks. But for the moment I want to focus our attention on the wee flame.

With mounting excitement (!) we watched the plane carrying the sacred light arrive from Greece. It landed and drew up in front of the usual Union Flag waving gaggle of school children and assorted dignitaries dressed to the nines in their flummery and regalia.

And then the moment the nation has all (with at least one exception) been looking forward to with great expectation and excitement as Annie Windsor, Seb Coe and David Beckham descended from the plane carrying the fire in its miner’s lamp. It was an impressive moment.

But one thing intrigued me.

As far as I know Greece is not Britain. It is foreign. It is beyond our boundaries. Therefore those carrying the flame had left and re-entered the country. But where were the Passport Apparatchiks to check their passports? Where were the queues for these people?

I know these people are special, they are famous, they are royalty but surely to protect our borders and to maintain security everyone ought to be checked in. How else do we know who is in this country?

I do hope that I have not spotted a relaxation of border controls. Apparatchiks have been fired for less in recent months. Maybe Theresa May should be questioned about this on the floor of the House.

Or maybe the normal rules do not apply if you are special. Heaven forbid that we should expect special people to queue up to share their passport photo with a Passport Apparatchik.

Mow maybe it’s only me but we are never going to see any improvements for ordinary people at our Border while the rich, famous and the privileged manage to skip the stressful parts of international travel that everyone else has to endure. We have no voice.

I always remember being told once that if you want to improve the quality of airline food, serve it in the boardrooms of the airlines for lunch. The same applies here.

Only once the likes of Princess Anne, David Beckham and Lord Coe have endured long waits for the Passport Apparatchiks to decide whether or not you can enter your own country will we see any real improvements in the way our Borders are guarded and patrolled.

It was once said by someone rich that ‘only the poor people pay taxes’. It now seems that only the poor people queue up to get their passports checked too.

Have a great week.

Sis felix. Et sis fortunatus.

Carrots, sticks and chocolates

Greetings.

Hopefully you have enjoyed the last of our Bank Holidays, at least for a wee while. Seems like April and May have been one long holiday. Now maybe we can get back to wealth creating before the summer beaches beckon.

For those of you still wondering-yep, we still have a hole in our High St with no signs of a suture being imminent. Ye Gods, the Japanese have re-built not just a motorway but their entire country in the time these taxpayer-funded Navvies have taken.

And the big question of the week-did you get your Olympic tickets?

As you know Cicero is a big fan of brands which ruthlessly demonstrate great customer service. And if you have ever been in his proximity when he has experienced brand-destroying bad customer service, you will immediately get a sense of his attitude towards poor customer service. It is not pretty and his feelings can be measured on the Richter scale.

Now you may not know this but Cicero is also a big fan of gowf, or golf as it is now known in these parts.

And a few weeks back Cicero’s aged amicus with whom he traverses the fairways was experiencing trouble with the machine with which he transports his golf implements around the course. In short, it was broken. Something to do with wheel bearings which as you know is a bit of a mystery to Cicero.

Cicero’s amicus dropped an e-mail to the manufacturer of said machine and within two days he was sent a replacement part, free of charge. No quibbling. No attempting to wriggle out. No charge. Brilliant. Cicero and his amicus were well and truly amazed.

That is what you call great customer service and it was all the better for being a complete surprise.

Cicero was musing on this experience when he read an article by one almost as learned as Cicero who was describing his experience with a boot manufacturer, Shipton and Heneage. It is entirely possible that you will not have heard of them but you can learn lots from them. Cicero hadn't and did.

For a start the marketing copy on their website is brilliant. It has real personality and conveys a great sense of what the brand is about, its heritage and its pedigree. It might only make and sell boots but this company knows a lot about the kind of brand it wants to be and delivers this in spades.

But the brand really got going when the boots arrived for it contained more than boots. For inside the box were two pairs of socks and a shoe brush. Another brand which seeks to quietly delight its customers. And what a great way to welcome you to the brand.

For many other businesses at this point, when you have handed over your sesterces, you stop being a prospect and become a customer and this is the point when all niceties go out of the window. It is almost like ‘now you have joined us we can stop trying’. Imagine that. Do you know anyone who behaves like that? But this is not the Shipton and Heneage way, obviously.

Someone once told Cicero that brands can motivate customers in three ways-by giving you a carrot to reward your behaviour; by applying the stick to make you lose out if you don’t act; or to offer a chocolate as a pleasant surprise for responding.

Providing chocolate is the most unusual type of incentive but it will get your brand talked about. And can you imagine any of the big service brands with whom we interact every day of every week behaved in a way we weren’t expecting? Nope. Quelle surprise.

So what kind of brand do you want to be known as-a carrot, stick or chocolate brand? If you go for chocolate, your brand can become very distinctive. And talked about.

Is it only me.........but this is becoming like ‘Carry On, doctor’.

I have been following with keen interest and mounting exasperation the debate around the future of the NHS. Have you?

Now it seems that many out there, supposedly speaking on our behalf, which is code for protecting their own vested interests, are getting their Jockeys in a knot because the Two Caesars (or at least one of them) is supposedly keen on introducing competition and the private sector into the NHS.

What is wrong with that?

Why exactly is competition such a hated word in the lexicon of the NHS? I know that NHS employees are State Apparatchiks but some of them are quite well educated and so should surely see the merits of competition. Are they so afraid of competition that they fear for their jobs? It might be worth pointing out that where there is no competition you end up with Sepp Blatter and FIFA. Do we really want that for the NHS? I think not.

And what is wrong with the introduction of the private sector into the NHS? One argument put forward by the Defenders of the Vested Interest is that the introduction of the private sector means money leaving the NHS. Now let me point one thing out and this might come as a shock to those of you of a more statist dirigiste persuasion-money leaves the NHS and flows to the private sector every minute of every day. Have you got over that shock of that yet?

Drug companies? Private sector. The people who run the computer systems? Private sector. Manufacturers of X ray equipment, CRT scanning equipment, bandages and elastoplasts? Private sector.

And there is good reason for this-it keeps cost down.

Now it might only be me but in my book the NHS only has to deliver against three key principles-it keeps us healthy; it does this at lowest possible cost; and it is free at point of delivery. End of. And if that means it has to use the private sector and introduce competition so be it.

And may I suggest that no one really cares unless of course you are an NHS Apparatchik who fears they won’t be able to stand the heat but is reluctant to leave the kitchen.

So my message to the Two Caesars-just get on with sorting out the NHS, it needs it. The time for listening and pandering to the Vested Interest Groups is over. We elected you to lead, so lead.

Have a great week.

Sis felix. Et sis fortunatus.

For the Long Jump

A friend of mine recently went for an interview. Because I am nice, kind and thoughtful, as I am sure you already know, I sent a message to say good luck and hoping interview went well. According to my friend ‘it is now all down to the competition’.

This is nonsense and I want to explain to you why today. But first let me tell you a story which I think is true.

Once upon a time, in 1968 to be precise, at the Olympic Games in Mexico, there were two great high jumpers-Lyn Davies from Britain and Bob Beamon from America. At the time Lyn Davis was the favourite for the gold medal but with his very first leap, in the rarefied atmosphere of Mexico, Beamon almost jumped out of the sand pit setting a world record that was not beaten for decades. Davies was shattered, failed to win a medal of any colour and never scaled the same heights, or jumped the same lengths, again.

In interviews afterwards the difference in mindsets was stark. Davies’s personal goal was to win the gold medal. Beamon’s was to jump 29 feet. He reckoned that would win the gold medal. Davies’s goal was not in his gift, that was out of his control. He could only control his own performance, not that of the competition. Beamon, on the other hand, could deliver his goal through his performance and his alone. Beamon only had one thing to worry about. Davies had the rest of the field to think about. Beamon had focus. Davies did not. Beamon minimised his interferences. Davies maximised his.

For me at an individual or even at business level, potential equals performance minus interferences. For us and our businesses to be successful and to be as great as they can be, we must work to reduce the interferences and by focusing on controlling those factors which are within our control and within our gift. Worrying about issues outwith and beyond our control is a waste of physical and emotional energy, energy that is better harnessed on helping us be the best we can be.

Let us take the example of my friend. By thinking about the competition for the role, energy was being dissipated, energy which would have been better deployed. Focus was being lost. Performance might suffer.

Similarly fears and negative doubts would start to creep in; what if conversations would be running through the head; interferences in the mind would grow and potential not realised. Fear of and intimidation by the competition was now the focus rather than a concentration on ensuring the key points were made in the interview or that the body language was correct in the meeting. We only have so many brain cells we can devote to a given subject at any one time so why not use these brain cells in a positive way on factors we can control.

And what is true of the individual is also true of the businesses and the brands we manage.

I have no problem with businesses who want to beat the competition or which want to grow at the expense of the competition or who carefully watch and monitor what their competitors do. Indeed I think these are perfectly healthy things for any ambitious and growing business to want to do. But I do not believe that businesses should be built around chasing market share, for example. Market share is a by product of doing a lot of other things very well. Market share is the business equivalent of trying to win the gold medal in the long jump-if someone comes along with a killer strategy which results in your market share being eroded, what do you do now? What interferences to great performance are now in your business, in the minds of your people?

Focus instead on having a great strategy which maximises the assets and capabilities within your business and keep your organisational focus on these factors. You control these. Let market share or similar outcome metrics follow.

It is also worth remembering that great brands and businesses do not even acknowledge there is a competition. Doing this confers legitimacy. Doing this distracts.

Sure some brand and businesses revel in their challenger status, see virgin and Avis for examples. But this is a carefully considered positioning strategy to differentiate. Do you think Apple acknowledges the existence of Microsoft? Or Coke acknowledges the presence of Pepsi? Or Tesco even knows Sainsbury’s exists? You might call it arrogance. They would call it being No 1.

In other words be Bob Beamon, not Lyn Davies.

Is it me?

Is it just me who gets up tight about the creeping absurdity of our approach to health and safety? I think not? On a train to Manchester the other day I was forced, and I mean that, forced, to carry my cup of coffee in a brown bag to my seat as if it was illegal contraband. And yet when I get to London I am almost and repeatedly bowled over by those stupid trolley dolly briefcase on wheels that now seem to be the briefcase of choice by those too lazy to carry their work like people once did in ye olden days.

Has it never occurred to our health and safety gualeiters just how dangerous these contraptions are compared to a cup of hot coffee and just how much space someone using one of these instruments of injury occupies? I bet that there is someone out there reading these words planning a campaign to outlaw these monsters or maybe even introduce a tax. Anyone else think coffee should be freed from the health and safety vice and a campaign launched to better regulate and control the use of trolley dolly briefcases.

Have a great week.

Sit felix. Et sit fortunatus.