Louise McGregor TV

Apprentice 4: Beauty and the Beast

The fourth task for the candidates was to develop and sell a new beauty product.

There are three parts to this task; design, brand and sell.

The design part was relatively simple, pick a base organic ingredient, pick a recipe, add some smells to it. Manufacture.

It was here that Empire (with Paula as leader) made their fatal costing mistake. It’s relatively simple maths but 3% is not the same as 3gramms. They bought 450g of sandalwood to add to their seaweed. Their product was better quality – but the one ingredient pricing put their budget from 5 pounds to over 700 pounds.

Ignite (with Noorul as leader) chose honey as their organic ingredient and with much screaming collected a supply of honey. Their product was pretty awful and seemed to dissolve on first use.

Both teams did OK on the branding; Empire went with “RockPoole” as a brand name reflecting the Poole origins of their seaweed, very simple packaging. Ignite named there’s “Honey I’m Home” with a simple bee theme. They dressed in beekeeper suits to sell at the market, which made them look remarkably like bio-hazard cleanup people.

In sales; both teams ended up selling at markets, choice of wrong locations. The Empire team made up for costings errors by bulk selling the last of their product for 400 pounds – but not enough.

CM200904_apprenticepaulaIn the board room there was the usual brawl. Paula took Yasmina and Ben into the boardroom, Yasmina has shown some potential so it was pretty clear she was coming out again. Ben put up a fight in his usual belligerent style. Paula made most of the decisions regarding product and branding to generate a good product. But that one cost mistake killed any chance of winning.

The quote of the week has to be “knee deep in crabshit for 300g of seaweed” from James, with Sir Alan’s “in a bleedin’ soap opera” a close second.

Sir Alan has pushed for cost control in every episode this series, and in every series. This is a fatal mistake. The only question was where he would see the responsibility lying.

Paula half-delegated the costings to Ben and Yasmina. And that was the problem. If she’d fully delegated the costings, she would have been able to also delegate the blame away in the boardroom.

So Sir Alan made a decision “Paula, you’re fired”.

It’s a good decision. Her team made a loss based on one simple maths error, and the excuse “I’m HR, I don’t do costings” is not good enough – you’re trying to win the apprentice, you better be able to do costings.

____

Postscript: the guests and audience on “Apprentice: You’re Fired” all thought Ben should go rather than Paula. Well that wouldn’t have been such a bad decision.

Continue reading “Apprentice 4: Beauty and the Beast” →

Louise McGregor Communication

The World’s Best Business Card

Most often you don’t have too much choice in your business card, you get the company standard. Generally you can choose which contact details are listed – I haven’t seen a twitter address on any from my company yet, but it’s only a matter of time. Occasionally you can chose some style or colour detail. However if you run your own company you can choose every detail.

Tod Defren, a principal at SHIFT Communications, chose a social media option to develop a design for his business cards, posting a brief and a price on CrowdSPRING. He’s pretty happy with the results, but says it was done as an experiment and seems rather amused that the negative feedback from some in the design community. (There are some other social media options to bid for offers on design work, Elance covers more than just design, Zooppa is more advertising).

I like several of the results collected by Tod Defren, and I don’t agree that he’s “outsourced the identity of his company” the visual identity has been defined and a brief given for some talented freelance designers to take a chance. I hope he gets a result there that he’s happy using, and one of the designers gets the money and the credit for it.

If none of those designs appeal perhaps he can talk to this guy who’s spent 25 years perfecting a business card.

 

image business card via pixabay

Louise McGregor HR, Marketing

The Net Generation and Marketing

Don Tapscott has long been a favourite writer of mine on the digital world. He’s a writer and a researcher who “gets it”. He recently gave a presentation to the Institute of Digital Marketing in London giving and overview of the Net Generation and how to attract them to work for you or buy from you. (The video and presentation are now archived.)

He argues that the Net Generation are not the dumbest generation (as Mark Bauerlein posits in his book The Dumbest Generation). As evidence he offers increasing SAT scores, IQ raw scores and the example of a 15 year old who had become a guild leader in “World of Warcraft“. World of Warcraft is a massive multiplayer online role-playing game, currently the largest in the world. A guild leader has around 40 followers and leads them on missions. The 15 year old guild leader listed his priorities as a guild leader and spoke about strategy, execution, project management, marketing and HR. He cited getting and keeping talent as his biggest challenge.

So it seems Net Gen aren’t so dumb – in fact they’re getting smarter.

In terms of attracting the talent of the Net Generation to work with us he reminds us that they have different priorities;

  1. meaningful work
  2. learning
  3. fun
  4. money

Here I have a small issue, I might have given the same at the age of 20 when I entered the work force after graduation. In fact, I would probably give the same list now. Assuming that the the money is going to be just reward for my skills and will cover my mortgage. I agree that these are the priorities of Net Gen – I’m just not convinced that it’s a big change. And I’m curious to see how the economic crisis will affect the reality of choices made by Net Gen members.

He also points out that recruiting and retaining talent has shifted, with talented Net Gen members moving in and out of the workforce more fluidly and companies based on knowledge workers taking an “alumni” approach to re-engage them when they’re ready to return to work. The key to successful attracting talent for companies will be developing a mindset of mobile human capital, maximising learning opportunities but accepting that talent will move, but can still support and build on your company’s goals and reputation from outside the company.

CM200904_dontapscottIn terms of marketing, he transforms the four P’s Product becomes Consumer Experience, Place becomes Anywhere and so on, and one is added; Brand. But brand with more complexity than it’s been allowed before moving from a visual concept to an experience to a relationship. I agree – and this shift might be true for more than just Net Gen members.

He’s a good speaker, with lots of good insights and while none of it would be earthshattering to someone who’s been paying attention it’s well thought out and supported by solid examples. I almost want to buy the book.

image NetGen

Louise McGregor HR

How to Fail a Job Interview

In case you missed it here are the steps;

  1. behave dismissively towards the assistant
  2. make a show of having been kept waiting by looking at your watch
  3. ask the assistant for a date
  4. insist on getting a date with the assistant (repeatedly)
  5. force your phone number on the assistant
  6. touch the assistant when asked specifically not to.
  7. greet the interviewer informally and casually
  8. sit with your leg up across your lap
  9. blow off the interviewer’s questions
  10. lie on your CV – it’s exaggerated here for comic effect but really, just don’t.
  11. attempt to bribe the interviewer

OK, that’s what I saw, did I miss anything?

Louise McGregor HR

4 Approaches to Work-Life Balance

The first thing I read this morning was an SMS from a friend who’d just finished work, at 5am. No she’s not a shift worker, she and a colleague had worked through the night. I could feel the words “she’s insane” scrolling through my head, but really I’m not much better having worked a couple of 12+ hour days this week.

So what happened to the work-life balance?

One definition of work-life balance says that you should find both achievement and enjoyment each day in each of four quadrants of your life; work, family, friends and self.  But people still place different priorities on each quadrant, and find a different pattern to balance their priorities.

picture-161: Working 9 to 5

No, nothing to do with Dolly Parton. The idea of turning up at 9, leaving at 5 has a certain simplistic appeal. But for many roles it’s just not realistic – even in regular office jobs people often need to be more flexible.

This choice can make it easier to manage commitments to family, friends, non-work interests and self. But there can also be a trade-off, if your manager needs more from you and sees that you place a much lower priority on work you’re unlikely get that juicy assignment.

As a manager it’s important to know that some people have this attitude to their work, they’ve sold their skills and attention to you for a certain number of hours per week and that’s how they manage their commitments to work and family. From the work perspective this shouldn’t be a problem provided the role doesn’t require undue flexibility, the work culture can accommodate it and the person has realistic expectations in relation to career progress.

picture-1712: Live to work

I’m sure you recognise the pattern, maybe you use this approach. Focusing on the job is the number one priority and all your energy goes into the work. No sacrifice is too great as long as the work gets done. This approach requires a lot of energy, but the rewards in the work sphere are really high.

One speaker at a recent training course was scornful of aiming for a work life balance saying that afterall it’s all part of life. He went on to talk about the measures he has in place to have time with his children but it was very clear that for him it was OK to put all his energy into work.

However the trade-of is the impact on relationships with family and friends. It’s hard to sustain a partnership if you never see each other. It’s also not really sustainable for the individual – leading on occasion to chronic illness.

picture-223: Set limits

There are lots of jobs; executives, managers, consultants where the “live to work” culture is endemic, apparently “setting limits” is an approach with growing appeal.

The idea is that you choose and publicise your personal limit. You might decide that you are not contactable during the weekends and switch off your blackberry. You might decide, as one colleague has,  that you will only schedule meetings in the morning. I’ve decided I will limit my schedule to no more than 4 meetings per day – I find if I have more meetings than that I’m not able to achieve what I need to each day. I’m also going to excuse myself from meetings that lack a purpose. It’s not going to be popular but it will be effective.

picture-234: A 4-Hour Work-Week

Timothy Ferriss’ book “The 4-Hour Work-Week” has become enormously popular and has been featured on CNN, Fast company, USA today and Wired.

He takes a radical look at how we think about work and wealth, and says that our current philosophy of working for forty years, saving, and deferring all the fun stuff until retirement needs rethinking.

Instead he suggests that there is a new subculture, “the New Rich”, which has abandoned this work-life paradigm and instead have found a way to make enough money and free enough time to follow a luxury lifestyle now. The book provides tools to challenge your thinking on how you currently spend your time including a “Lifestyle Quotient” calculator.

I might never manage to fully automate my income, which would give me an LQ of 0, I might not even manage a 4 hour work day (this week’s was 40 hours in four days), but it did challenge me to think a little more in terms of what I really want to be spending my time on – and where I spend my best energy.  Well worth the read.

Image: balance 

Louise McGregor TV

Apprentice 3: Get Fit

The third task for the candidates was to develop and sell a piece of fitness equipment. The body rocker vs the home multi-gym.

There are two parts to this task; design and pitch.

Neither product was really convincing – but the body rocker at least looked like something could be sold and indeed got a total of 10,280 orders from all suppliers (the bulk coming from John Lewis).

The best performer goes to Philip for two reasons – his line “it’s the ipod of the exercise world” and for defending Lorraine. Lorraine’s pitch seemed weak, but somehow they scored sales so it’s a bit churlish to complain.

Sir Alan Sugar commented that the product was “bloody awful” and quoted one of the company reps as saying “the best thing about the pitch was that they took the thing away with them”.

James was a pretty awful project manager and took Maj and Ben into the boardroom with him. I thought James would go – he was a clueless leader. Maj doesn’t seem very active, he does only what he’s told, waiting for his project manager to give him more work. Ben was responsible for the ridiculous product, an ugly black box with wires hanging out of it, however he was the only one coming up with ideas (partly because James didn’t lead the brainstorming very well). Ben comes off as pretty sneaky.

The boys weren’t any better behaved in the boardroom than the girls.

Sir Alan got sick of the conversation,  slowed them right down, and fired Maj

In my view it’s a wrong decision, James is pretty hopeless and so emotional. Part of the “bad product” decision is at his door – he couldn’t manage a simple brainstorming session.

Louise McGregor Buzzword

Thinking outside the box

CM2009_04_box“Thinking outside the box” refers to thinking creatively, outside the usual parameters, finding original solutions to a pressing problem. It’s often used by managers to inspire innovation – if only it were that simple!

The phrase turned up in the 60s and 70s and is traced back to a famous 9 dot puzzle first published in 1914 which instructs you to connect a grid of 9 dots with four straight lines – if you haven’t seen the puzzle before it’s presented  here (with the solution).

Initially the puzzle seems impossible to solve until you realise that you don’t have to restrict yourself to the area within the nine dots. Once you think outside that box you can solve the puzzle easily.

If you’ve seen the puzzle before then try thinking of how you could connect all nine dots with fewer lines, can you do it with just one line?  (It is possible; in fact there is more than one solution.)

The phrase may not inspire innovation within companies but it has inspired cartoons. It has also been linked to Pandora’s box and used to inspire some wonderful art. A fluid explosion of colour called “Thinking outside pandora’s box” by Tim Parish, cheeky fabric art by Susan Else, and subversive photography by Holger Eleby.

So it seems to be a term that’s well understood and that does inspire artists and cartoonists. How useful is it in the business world?

Louise McGregor Business

Blame the Business Schools

As governments search for solutions to the current financial crisis others are looking for who to blame and business schools are getting their share of the blame.

A colleague – who also holds and MBA – sent me the article “Harvard’s Masters of the apocalypse” in early May. Which discusses the accolades given and the business cases written by business schools at the heart of this and earlier crises and says;

Business schools have shown a remarkable ability to miss the economic catastrophes unfolding before their eyes.

The debate is being played out on the Harvard site, where Harvard defends itself saying that those responsible for the companies and organisations involved in the current crisis graduated some years ago and the courses have changed since then. Yet the Harvard graduate writing in the Times article above points out that both Enron and RBS were studied as best practice up to the time of their respective falls. Granted RBS was studied from the perspective its successful acquistion and integration of NatWest, but still the company has fallen a long way in a year, and the CEO is now labelled as the “world’s worst banker“. So the defence offered by Harvard doesn’t really hold.

Some commentators predict that the age of the MBA is over, I don’t think so – and not just because I happen to have one. But there need to be some changes.

Conflict of Interest

The first thing that needs to be addressed is that there is a fundamental conflict of interest; students pay a lot of money to join courses – making it difficult for school’s to kick students out for either bad performance or unethical behaviour. At my school, in my year, there was one student who cheated and one who did not perform, taking a second attempt at every exam. The exam retakes were legal but both guys have the same degree as me, effectively undercutting the value of my degree. But they paid the same as me.

Silo Thinking

During the degree subjects are studied separately; finance, accounting, organisational development, HR, marketing are all kept separate. Business ethics and shareholder management come far down the list. But the subjects affect each other and need to be integrated. A friend who went to IMD told me of one case study they did where each group recommended strategy changes to grow the business. At the end the professor of organisational development criticised them all saying “this is a family business – why did you all assume that the right thing to do was to grow big? why did none of you think of the current culture of the company?”

By getting out of the silo thinking students would be required to integrate finance, marketing, growth, organisational culture and ethics in developing their strategy.

Subjects studied

Beyond the risk and return ration and the discussion of WACC I don’t remember much about risk management. Judging by the current fall out it’s been missing from some other school curricula.

Underlying assumptions

The underlying premise of almost all of MBA teaching is that the company should grow. That you measure the success of the company by market capitalisation, or by market share, or by any other simple numeric measure relating to size – one company director boasted of headcount.

But companies can define other measures of success particularly if they’re private companies and not driven by the shareholders’ expectations.

There are other changes suggested, doctors and lawyers have to register each year, ship’s captains and pilots have to update their training regularly. Perhaps it’s time for this level or professionalisation to occur in the business world. Afterall the accounting is regulated and audited, internal processes are now guided by SOX. Certifying business leaders might be the only thing left.

POST SCRIPT: Bob Sutton is even more specific, he doesn’t just blame MBA training – but suggest that economics and the economists are too blame. Well, there’s enough blame to go around I’m sure the economists can take their share.

image graduation via pixabay

Louise McGregor Editorial

G20 Protests

Now that the dust has settled on the G20 discussions and the protests maybe it’s time to understand what really went on.

I heard an interview on BBC World radio discussing the reporting on the events last week. In the journalist’s view (and sorry I didn’t catch his name) the violence had been almost a self-fulfilling prophecy and was largely generated by the police and the media. The police announcement that they “expected violence” signalled to more moderate protesters that they should stay away. Even so, there were many protesters there protesting on an issue basis – at the loss of their pension funds, at the loss of jobs, at the lack of effective regulation or at banker’s bonuses. There was a small group of extreme and violent protesters who led the charge into the RBS building.

The best online report I can find of the events comes from Al Jazeera – English.

It’s interesting, according to Hamish MacDonald the protesters were asking to leave the area when the police charged. The police were targetting a small group of protesters but it’s pretty hard to target a small group in a surging crowd.

But focus on the filmclip between 1.30 and 1.50, there’s an interesting ratio of protester:police:photographer

The police are holding their line against the protesters. But behind the protesters are banks of photographers. The ratio here seems to be 1:1:2
Here the protesters have broken into the RBS building, it’s a symbolic break-in – RBS has come to symbolise the worst wrongs of the crisis. But look, there are half a dozen protesters entering the building, no police visible, and many cameras. The ratio is 1:0:1

Two tenets of democracy are the right to protest and the right of free press. It looks as though those are both healthy in the UK.

One further tenet is linked to freedom of arrest or harassment by police. That’s looking a little doubtful. I wasn’t there – but seeing and reading first hand accounts it seems the police did the policing equivalent of opening a walnut with a sledgehammer.