A perfect storm

A recent piece by Ken Blanchard and Terry Waghorn in Forbes.com states that we live in a time when three powerful forces – demography, sociology and technology – are creating a perfect storm for accelerated change. It’s a good read and provocative also.

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The Net Generation is coming of age and making its presence felt. As consumers, they want to be prosumers – co-innovating products and services with producers. As citizens, they are transforming how politicians are elected and govern. As employees, they are approaching work collaboratively, which is collapsing the hierarchy and forcing organisations to rethink how they manage and innovate.

 

That collaborative mindset has become all-pervasive. Individualistic we may be, yet awareness is growing that united we stand and divided we fall. The crude oil fueling this ‘agequake’ is a new generation of technology creating a giant leap in how we communicate and connect. On the new, level playing field, we all have access to the same information at the same time.

 

Consider how these forces influence our relationship with our governments. We are rapidly coming to the end of the phase we think of as representative democracy. For centuries, we elected people to represent us in far-off forums and then judged how well they did whenever an election came around. That was before the Internet, e-mail, IMing, Facebook and Obama. He, more than any other politician, has leveraged these disruptive forces to his advantage.

 

Evolving from obscure state Senator to the president-elect of the United States in just a few years, Obama launched a campaign that reinvented democracy. We are finally seeing the flowering of Lincoln‘s government “of the people, by the people and for the people.” And how has Obama done this? By appealing to the youth vote; by the pronoun we – as in “change we can believe in” rather than “believe in me” – and by leveraging the tools of social networking: e-mail, blogs, text messages and more. The result was a top-to-bottom organisational cohesion that powerfully connected Obama with his supporters.

 

Now, consider how these forces affect how businesses are run. Again, a revolution is underway. You can see it in how companies interact with customers: the old, “we make, you buy” mentality is rapidly giving way to one of co-creation and collaboration. You can see it in how executives interact with employees – systems are becoming more open and transparent; power is being distributed more widely, hierarchies are inverting and there is a growing sense of shared ownership and responsibility.

 

Let’s take the strategy development process as a simple example. In the past, strategy formulation in most companies was a closed process, one that was typically performed by a group of top executives who sequestered themselves somewhere for a few days, did some brainstorming and then—presto – the next year’s strategy was born.

 

Today, more enlightened leaders try to involve as many people in the process as they possibly can. This inclusive process might take the form of people at all levels generating new ideas and opportunities. Or, it could be as simple as a front-line worker participating as one of the many random voices in a company’s online chat room. Either way, the effect is the same–everyone gets an opportunity to help shape the future.

 

One company putting this democratic notion into practice is IBM, which has made a concerted effort in recent years to leverage technology to engage its entire organisation in its strategy discussions. All 319,000 IBMers around the world were recently invited to participate in an open 72-hour online “strategy jam” about the future direction of the company.

 

Another example of this democratic leadership can be seen in how companies innovate. Rather than relying on the creative few living out in a disconnected silo (i.e. research and development, new product development, incubators), progressive company leaders are making innovation everyone’s responsibility.

 

To insure that people are willing and able to participate in innovation, these leaders are making the necessary changes to processes and systems. This includes seeing that people have been properly trained, that they all have access to the same information, are given the time to experiment, have access to resources and are recognized and rewarded for their efforts, even if things don’t turn out as planned.

 

Procter and Gamble’s A.J. Lafley exemplified this new innovation leadership when he launched “Connect & Develop,” an online portal that fosters a community linking P&G employees with anyone else in the world seeking to pitch, promote and discuss potential products and services. Through this portal, P&G has created an engine of innovation by finding a way to solicit new ideas from outside the company’s walls.

 

A similar strategy was described by Aideen Waters of Allianz at the recent Innovation Forum in Croke Park where she explained her responsibility as the delivery of an Allianz global strategy to use innovative thinking gathered from all countries and all levels of the business as a means of putting the customer at the heart of the organisation.

 

In short, the world’s best companies, like democracy in the US, are evolving. Tomorrow’s leaders like IBM and P&G have already begun using technology to turn their organizations upside down – sharing decision making power with its members on the front lines. These organisations represent the future. Companies that fail to adapt in this way, like the traditional form of government we have grown accustomed to, will simply fade away into the history books.

From Forbes.com

Incite 61

 

 

Why The Best Service is No Service: a conversation with Bill Price

A book of the same title was recommended to me by a colleague, so I picked  this interview by Guy Kawasaki with the author as an introduction. Customer service is a huge issue for all companies, Bill Price offers some valuable advice here.  

 

Bill Price was Amazon’s first Global VP of Customer Service. Before Amazon, Bill was a senior consultant at McKinsey (working closely with Peters and Waterman as they wrote In Search of Excellence). Since leaving Amazon, Bill formed Driva Solutions to help clients deliver great customer experiences. He recently co-authored a new book, The Best Service Is No Service: How to Liberate Your Customers from Customer Service, Keep Them Happy, and Control Costs, with David Jaffe. (Mind you I have had much hassle with Amazon.co.uk customer service in relation to their range of products available in Ireland).

 

In this interview he reveals the concept of “Best Service” and why it is important to small business.

From an interview with Guy Kawasaki for Sun Microsystems

1.             Question: Why is “the best service is no service”?

Answer: Customers don’t want to call their bank or email their online retailer if something’s confusing or if there’s an error–instead, everything should work perfectly in the first place. A recent survey cited 75% of CEOs proclaiming that their companies provide above average customer service, yet almost 60% of customers said that they were “somewhat to extremely dissatisfied” with their most recent customer service experience. Clearly, there’s a large gap.

We need to reduce the rate of contacts by eliminating dumb contacts entirely, offering engaging self-service and being proactive, delivering great customer experiences when things do break down, and only then to deliver great customer experiences.

2.             Question: Are companies stupid, lazy, or just don’t give a damn, so they don’t build things right from the very start?

Answer: All three, unfortunately! Some companies are stupid in not recognizing how much money and good will they are wasting, and letting bad measurement systems, processes, and Not Invented Here get in the way of what we call “Best Service.”

Some companies are lazy in that they think it’s too hard to fix service, and therefore better to “get by” and fix the symptoms than do the hard work on the root causes. And there are lots of “don’t give a damn” companies, too, particularly where a short-term profit motive dominates or they are fixated with an engineering culture.

3.             Question: Which companies can you hold up as good examples?UK and Flight Centre out of Australia are also on their way. Dell, once criticized, has done some outstanding aspects of Best Service like listening to their customers and offering Windows XP. Even the New York Department of Motor Vehicles mended its ways some time ago.

Answer: Amazon clearly gets it the most. Apple, eBay, Kingfisher Airlines, McDonald’s, and Vodaphone are trying hard to get it. Dyson’s and First Direct in the

4.             Question: Which companies are in your hall of shame?

Answer: There are plenty of “bad cases” out there such as telecom companies and ISPs that are adding more contact centers and support agents as they add subscribers. Nearly every IT help desk and virtually every Internet banking customer care organization that has any care or tech support calls are on the list too. All you need to do is look for companies that hide their phone number on web sites.

5.             Question: Can it be that it’s “just math” in the sense that it may cost less to provide lousy products and deal with issues than to do things right, so the companies are doing the financially rational thing?

Answer: No, it’s the opposite case. Most companies actually haven’t done the math to deliver Best Service because Best Service is always cheaper–or they do the wrong math. It’s not just “cost of making bad or confusing product compared to a good product versus associated cost of service.”

The equation must also include repeat contacts–what we call “snowballs”–recalls, legal costs, and brand damage, etc. In many industries it’s also not about good or bad product. In financial services or telecom providers, for example, adding complexity to products is seen as good by marketing or product design–they believe that they are making better products–when in fact many customers just want something that is simple to use and easy to understand like the Apple iPhone or Amazon’s 1-click.

Plus, there are the costs of the service operations themselves–that is, the help desks, call centers, and back-office departments are clearly the biggest single cost category, often 5-10% of sales. At most major mobile carriers, insurance providers, and even some airlines the biggest workforces are in customer service. Then, as service issues occur, there are increased costs of complaints such as legal remedies or compliance.

Mobile phone companies don’t even want you to know what you are really paying and invented new math: “$200 free calls on your $50 a month plan”, but it’s much more complex even than that when you read the small print. On the other hand, MCI in the old days, and Telstra today, analyze call pattern and then call their customers to recommend a LOWER-rate plan. That’s we like: being proactive, a core part of Best Service.

6.             Question: What if the management says that they’d love to do the right thing, but they are in a cost-competitive market and would go broke doing so?

Answer: We have yet to find a company that couldn’t improve service and cut costs at the same time. There is a mistaken mindset that Best Service is more expensive, but poor service is a killer since you end up needing more of it for the wrong customers in the wrong situations.

7.             Question: What web sites would you consider good examples of self-service?

Answer: Alaska Airlines, Amazon, CheckFree, Citibank Card eBay, First Direct, USAA, and Zappos are all doing a fine job in web-based self-service–what we like to call “engaging self-service” This requires that (a) customers don’t have to call or email or open a chat session to finish their order or ask about something; and (b) the companies listens to the customer’s requests and, if possible, eliminates the needs entirely.

8.             Question: What analog companies such as stores and restaurants are good examples of self service?

Answer: Pizza Hut enabled SMS ordering: simple for the customer and easier for them, a two-way SMS exchange so that customers can check and confirm and all those things you’d do over the phone.

Nordstrom has been legendary for its service, including two of the seven principles of Best Service: make it really easy to contact your company, and listen and act. The Palomino restaurant chain takes reservations on its web site, cutting maitre-de time to answer calls, and eliminating frustration to the diner. And many corner shops, dentist practices, and dry cleaners practice Best Service because they know that it’s essential to ensure repeat business.

9.             Question: What’s an example of “proactive” service?

Answer: The German Autobahn is a 30+ year old case: if there’s congestion ahead, a radio signal turns on or interrupts car radios with a warning message, enabling the driver to seek alternative routes or at least understand why there’s a problem. Being proactive means connecting a “why” trigger with information or choices, and companies such as XM practiced it superbly after an outage last year. Amazon used to send “missed promises” email messages to customers so that they could cancel the order and shop elsewhere. Few did cancel, and those that did were very appreciative.

10.         Question: What are the tangible steps for a company to take to fix a service problem?

Answer: There are seven steps, or principles, based on the foundation understanding the nature of service requests–that is, to really understand the demand for service and “challenge” why customers need to contact companies for service. Each principle includes sample frameworks and a series of questions to see if you’re on the path to Best Service, or headed the other way:

1.                    Eliminate dumb or avoidable contacts to free up capacity and slash costs.

2.                    Build self-service that works to free up even more capacity and cut costs even more.

3.                    Find ways to be proactive rather than reactive because it is often cheaper than waiting.

4.                    Engage the real “owners” of customer problems to work with the customer service team to fix the problems

5.                    Make it really easy to contact your business.

6.                    Use the contacts you get to listen closely to the customer, and act upon WOCAS (What Our Customers Are Saying)

7.                    Fix reporting metrics, processes, and the staffing side to deliver great experiences for customer contacts.

 

11.         Question: How should a company measure customer satisfaction?

Answer: The rate of customer-initiated contacts that require personal support is the best measure of satisfaction. This is expressed as “CPX,” or “contacts per X,” where “C” equals calls + email messages + chat sessions, and “X” equals transactions or installations or invoices sent. Measured and shared weekly, companies achieving Best Service see 20-40% per year reductions in CPX and as a result much happier customers and lower costs too.

Our second killer metric is the rate of repeat contacts, or “snowballs.” Just like the snowball rolling down the hill, getting bigger and menacing skiers, repeat contacts are clear “customer dissatifiers” that need to be stopped–or melted–before they ruin the company’s reputation. CheckFree is a great example here: over the past five years their transactions have quintupled while customer support headcount is down 20%, at the same time that customer satisfaction rose by 20%.

12.         Question: Has all the CRM (customer relationship management) software in the world improved the situation at all?

Answer: CRM software only helps when something else has changed. If CRM is used to create an organization that aligns with the way customers want to deal with the business, then good; if it’s been used to understand how customers want to deal with the company, and surface and circulate WOCAS, then good; if it’s been used to drive proactive service, then good; if it’s been used to turn three contacts into one, then good.

But if it’s just been used by marketing to drive offers and cross-selling, or to divide service into complex skill-based models that are hard to manage and deliver, or to segment service in a way that’s impossible to manage, then it hurts! Unfortunately, most CRM software has not really been used to improve service at all.

 

http://www.sun.com/solutions/smb

 

Pricing in an inflationary downturn

Tieing in with the recent Incite  here is another view on pricing.

In the current environment, costs are rising as price sensitivity increases. Six tactics from the McKinsey company that can help businesses get pricing right.

 

Getting pricing right is always a challenge in an economic downturn, as decreasing demand, excess capacity, and greater price sensitivity all conspire to drive down prices. In most downturns, the cost of raw materials, feedstocks, and other upstream supplies—as well as the cost to serve customers (for delivering goods, for example)—tends to stabilize and even decrease as business activity slows. As a result, decreases in downstream prices are at least partially offset by lower upstream costs. But in the current environment, not only is weaker demand from the end user making it harder to maintain prices, but significantly higher and more volatile input costs, energy for example, mean that companies caught in the middle are getting hit from both sides.

What’s a business to do? In this unusual downturn, companies need to manage the profitability of individual customers and transactions with greater precision, develop richer insights into their customers’ changing needs and price sensitivities, and understand more clearly the microeconomics that shape their own industries and those of their suppliers. Three McKinsey consultants have assembled six tactics aimed at maintaining the best balance possible between sales volume and profit margins in the current challenging environment.

 

Watch for sudden shifts in price structure

Companies should be vigilant in monitoring pricing policies that reduce revenue—such as volume discounts, rebates, and cash discounts—as well as cost-to-serve, including freight and sales support. In the current downturn, rising costs and declining demand can cause these elements to change more dramatically and quickly than they have in the past. Rapidly increasing fuel prices, for example, are putting intense pressure on delivery costs. Declining demand means that some customers may be collecting volume discounts they no longer deserve. Best-practice companies are reviewing much more frequently their pocket margin waterfalls,1 which show how much revenue companies really keep from each of their transactions, and adjusting their pricing policies accordingly—for example, by adding delivery fuel surcharges to every order. Without the extra attention and quick action, erosion at all points of a transaction can quickly destroy profits in times like these.

 

Monitor customer-level profitability

Companies should use transaction-level data to measure precisely the profitability of each customer. By doing so, companies can detect if the cost to serve particular customers or declining order volumes are nudging those customers below target profitability levels. In this downturn, for example, many customer groups are becoming simultaneously smaller and more costly to serve. One industrial company found that more than 20 percent of its customers had fallen below breakeven profitability, forcing it to raise prices selectively and, where possible, lower cost-to-serve by decreasing delivery frequency, reducing sales support, or fulfilling orders through alternate channels.

 

Adjust to changing customer needs

Downturns always prompt changes in customer needs and in the benefits they value when choosing a supplier. The dynamics of the current downturn mean that such swings can occur even more rapidly. In this environment, the best companies are constantly assessing—through market research and direct contact—how economics are changing for their customers. Even more important, they are reacting quickly by retooling their price and benefit offerings accordingly. For example, one Dublin based distributor that imports high end products from the Far East developed a new brand and range of economy products which still meet their customer specifications but at less cost. The new range helps the distributor’s customers to decrease project costs. As a result, the distributor can maintain its profit margins even while selling the alternative range at a lower price. The combination of lower demand and higher input costs in the current downturn makes it critical to get these kinds of adjustments to the cost/benefit balance correct.

 

Update price sensitivity research

Dramatic increases in energy and food prices have made consumers much more sensitive to prices across a wide range of product categories. Each price increase for necessities such as food and fuel has cut a little more from discretionary budgets, sharply increasing price sensitivity. Market price tests become obsolete after just a few months. To get price points right, pricing sensitivity research and market price tests should be rerun immediately to track these changes.

 

Monitor your industry’s microeconomics

Radical shifts in costs and demand have thrown previously predictable market pricing mechanisms into chaos. Responding correctly requires a keen understanding of the microeconomic forces at play at the industry level. In one example, a building materials company found itself in a precarious position as the downturn deepened: a precipitous decline in Irish housing starts meant diminishing demand, while the costs for raw materials, energy, and transportation were increasing rapidly. In response, the company reassessed the industry’s microeconomics, looking in particular at the latest supply, demand, and cost dynamics. With this new information, managers cut capacity at a plant in an area where the decreased supply would not cause a local shortage. The capacity reduction, which would have had little if any effect on market prices a year earlier, brought about a better balance between supply and demand and kept market prices an estimated 10 percent higher than they would have been without the change.

 

Study your suppliers

The extreme volatility in this downturn demands that companies reexamine not only the microeconomics of their own industries but also the microeconomics of their suppliers’ industries. Recently, a specialty chemicals company invested in modeling the current industry supply, demand, and cost dynamics for one of its primary raw materials. By doing so, the company predicted an industry-wide, 15 percent price increase for that raw material three months before it happened—a feat of some significance because there hadn’t been an annual price increase of more than 5 percent for that material within the past six years. Suspecting an imminent and unusually large price increase, the chemicals company began adding clauses covering raw-material price increases to its customer contracts, a move that would have met extreme resistance if made after the price increases were announced. Instead, the move established an industry precedent for passing cost increases through to customers.

 

About the Authors

Cheri Eyink, Mike Marn and Stephen Moss of the McKinsey company – with localisation additions by Billy Linehan

 

www.mckinsey.com

 

Hungry for Success

 

They say hunger is the best sauce, and hunger was foremost in the minds of web developers Ciara Traynor and her Canadian business partner Anthony Kauffmann when they found themselves working late into the night on a project a couple of years ago.  The sound of their grumbling tummies had become a familiar chorus in Irish life, where ever-increasing demands on time meant the idea of shopping for and preparing a meal was a luxury in itself.
After turning their office upside-down in vain looking for a takeaway menu, they fumed at the fact that there wasn’t some way of getting fed online.  That frustration was their eureka moment, and the idea for takeaway.ie was born.

Ciara had an understanding of how the restaurant business ticks as her parents owned a sea-side restaurant in Laytown, Co Meath.  However, her career had taken a different path.  She had worked in the banking sector in IT and then spent a few years in Paris before returning home to break into the area of web design.  Herself and Anthony, pride themselves on building clear, practical commercial websites through their company Technotion (www.technotion.ie).

The duo realised that the concept for an online food ordering website, coupled with the fact that they were the first in Ireland to try to fill this gap in the market, was a big project, and probably best separated from the ‘bread and butter’ business of Technotion.

“Essentially we wanted to build a portal, where good quality food outlets could put their menus on our site and customers could order directly through it,” explains Ciara. 

They approached Dublin City Enterprise Board (DCEB) and got assistance through two employment grants and the invaluable mentoring skills of Celtar consultant Billy Linehan. “DCEB have been fantastic,” says Ciara. “Billy was really enthusiastic, but he warned us that we needed to get a better grip of the details.  We realised that we had to do more than just talk the talk; we had this great idea, but it was just an idea.  We had to build this site and start approaching people before we could speculate on how our users, clients and income might grow.”
They managed to secure the essential ingredient for any web-based business – the right domain name.  When someone is hungry and hunting for a solution online, a ‘does-what-it-says-on-the-tin’ domain name is crucial – no tricky hyphens, no added words.  Takeaway.ie was launched in April 2008 and is on an impressive growth curve both from clients keen to make their food available, and from punters happy to take part in Ireland’s latest food revolution.  What’s more, Ciara and Anthony also snapped up the takeaway.mobi domain so they will be able to develop their concept into the mobile technology market.

Online food ordering is a hot idea right now.  One of the biggest restaurant franchises in the world, Dominos, has seen online sales grow 85% to £25.3m in the UK in the last year, with internet and text orders representing 22% of the firm’s pizza delivery sales in the UK.  While many restaurants have websites where they can place their latest menus and offer contact details, takeaway.ie can give them something almost impossible to achieve on their own – top billing on a Google search. 

“Some of the restaurants we approach say ‘well we already have a site’, but we explain that what we’re doing will not detract from that online presence at all,” says Ciara.  “In fact, they have the same facility to update their menus and keep control of the content, but we make that menu easier to find online and much more prominent.” 

From a surfer’s point of view, takeaway.ie ticks lots of boxes.  Searching for a meal near you is made easy by the straight-forward layout and function of the site.  And there’s no bickering if someone wants Indian and someone else Italian food, as it’s easy to order from a variety of outlets at one sitting.  It can cater for an individual with an attack of the munchies just as easy as someone  who’s entertaining guests for the evening.
The revenue stream is simple, there is no set up charge to restaurants and it’s free for website users. Takeaway.ie’s business model sees it take a percentage of each sale generated through the site.  Food outlets are happy with the growth in business, and customers can enjoy the satisfaction of good food delivered to their door without the hassle of cooking and cleaning.

When the old and young collide at work, working with generation Y

We see a generational gap in many organisations, often highlighted by poor communications and team work. If it is hard to get people from various generations to reach any agreement, it is even harder to do so within a company. Cristina Simón, professor at the Instituto de Empresa in Madrid, Spain, has identified and analyzed the four generations that currently make up the corporate workforce.

 

In an interview Simón explains the differences between groups of workers, which she identifies as “traditional workers,” “baby boomers,” “Generation X” and “Generation Y.” She also suggests key steps for enabling a 21st-century business to successfully overcome the generational duel that takes place between traditional workers and more recent arrivals.

 

How many generations are currently employed by companies, and what are their special characteristics?

 

Simón: Although there are differences from country to country, we can generally identify four generational groups that are currently active professionally:

–Traditional workers (born before 1946): They value loyalty and discipline, and they respect authority and hierarchy. These workers played the key role in their companies when economic development was strong.

–Baby boomers (1946-1960): Their critical years for joining the workforce – between the mid-1960s and the end of the 1970s – were a period when most European countries enjoyed significant progress. This led to great expectations of success. Currently, this group occupies positions of higher corporate responsibility and has the largest proportion of workaholics in history. This is also the generation that gave birth to the yuppie phenomenon.

–Generation X (1961-1979): This generation has the best academic training and international experience in history. They have begun to make a break with traditional patterns of behaviour, demanding a more informal environment and abandoning hierarchical authority in favour of a more horizontal and flexible structure. They have pioneered policies that involve flexibility and conciliation. This generation is rich in entrepreneurs because personal initiative predominates within a context of scepticism toward large enterprises.

–Generation Y (starting from 1980): Generation Y is the first in history to have lived their entire lives with information technology. It is not easy for them to understand the world without it. Like members of Generation X, their childhood was comfortable and prosperous. They are more individualistic than earlier generations and demand autonomy in their opinions and behaviour. They emphasize personal activities above social and labour considerations.

 

What social factors define the character of each of these groups?

Common life experiences more clearly define each generational group. For example, traditional workers were born during the war [World War II] and the post-war period. As a result, they were raised in an environment of scarcity, which led to the fact that they value austerity. They defend such social goals as peace and national prosperity.

Baby boomers, on the other hand, spawned a series of social phenomena based on their strong reaction to their parents, such as the hippie movement, feminism and divorce. Both X and Y groups have had less social impact, I believe, because they emerged more recently and have not been analyzed sufficiently.

 

What are their main differences when it comes to focusing on work in a business? What is each generation trying to find in the company?

To put it as simply as possible, we can say that traditional workers are pragmatic and disciplined, and are motivated by loyalty. In contrast, baby boomers are more optimistic and more self-motivated. Generation X is the most sceptical when it comes to organizations, and it is trying to find balance and flexibility, above all. Finally, in Generation Y there is a shortage of loyalty to the generation. Nevertheless, Generation Y puts a great deal of importance on intense relationships with co-workers and supervisors.

 

How does each generation understand the concept of “corporate loyalty?”

With the arrival of each new generation, the concept of loyalty has been steadily losing ground. Beyond change in the hierarchy of values, this steady decline in loyalty is due to the fact that it is impossible for companies to continue to offer job security. The company then replaces stability with “employability.” That changes the motivational focus of professionals away from the company and toward themselves. All these changes mean that the appeal of loyalty has continued to weaken, although inertia is still strong among traditional workers and baby boomers.

 

In which generation are the differences between men and women greatest?

When it comes to social values, women in every generation are more oriented toward other people, and they have a greater sense of dedication and service. Men are generally more individualistic. When it comes to professional preferences, although women put more emphasis on flexibility, the newest generations, especially Y, care more about traditionally “masculine” work values, such as income levels and opportunities for promotion.

 

What are the main values that characterize Generations X and Y?

As I noted earlier, both X and Y grew up in a comfortable environment in their years of childhood and adolescence. When these people enter the labour market, they have a harder time than their predecessors did. It was much easier for earlier generations to find work, become independent from their families and so forth.

As a result, there is a sense of frustration and scepticism that logically extends to the way they view the working environment. Don’t forget that the working environment in our society has a lot of impact on social activity, starting with the period when marital couples and families are formed and on to the growth of social networks.

 

Is there a conflict between the working environments of the four generations?

Often when these topics are discussed with HR managers and other professionals, people make comments that reflect those differences. I don’t know if they can be characterized as “conflicts,” but they have an impact on the dynamics of working relationships. Organizations also have these sorts of experiences.

The current generation of managers is dominated by baby boomers and the older members of Generation X. Those are the levels at which corporate cultures are defined, along with corporate modes of behaviour. From this perspective, we could say that some of the failures of young people in their working environment stem from the fact that they sometimes have very different hierarchies of value.

 

Are HR departments prepared for understanding the generational differences? And do they know how to deal with them?

Given the nature of change in the labour market, HR departments are concerned about everything that can affect their retention of employees. As a result, they are looking into whether these differences are a possible cause for their failure to retain workers. In any case, where this analysis makes the most sense is in those companies that demand younger workers, whether or not those employees are sufficiently qualified.

In those kinds of cases, the function of HR must be to study basic processes in order to make them more attractive to workers from Generation Y. Above all, they must draw up a psychological contract with their employees and with those candidates who have the kinds of background they are looking for.

What strategies and policies do you recommend that companies apply?

Those companies that consider it critical to adapt to new generations of workers must take another look at their HR practices so they can refine their supply of jobs, as I said earlier. It is important to understand the relationships that exist between young people and technology, which often have an impact on social standards and dynamics. For example, best recruitment practices should include having a Web site that is attractive and easy to use, and which makes it easier and faster for long-term job candidates to interact with the company.

Another thing to keep in mind is that the natural tendency of young people is not to focus on commitment or loyalty to a corporate brand but to a combination of factors that make them feel good, on the one hand, and have personal value, on the other hand. From the viewpoint of selection, there is a double advantage to an approach that involves realistic interviews and tests.

This approach can diagnose the competencies of job candidates and let candidates know that the company is both creative and dynamic. These can be some of the keys to strengthening the selection process and minimizing the turnover of new employees who leave within months. That kind of turnover is both undesirable and costly.

Some studies show that young people prefer strong performance-based cultures where results count more than job seniority or personal appearance. This means that a company needs to create systems for performance-based compensation in which short-term variables count more than long-term results.

Especially in Spain, the concept of job turnover must be overhauled. Traditionally, when professionals leave a company, it has been very traumatic both for the company and the employee. There is a sense of betrayal because of the high value placed on loyalty, but that is currently on the decline.

Young people, on the other hand, leave a company because they find another opportunity elsewhere. They understand that these are the rules of the game, and they don’t discount the possibility of returning to the same company in the future if conditions are favourable. An intelligent strategy for leveraging young talent should rethink the issue of job turnover and consider maintaining this relationship with workers who depart, as a result.

 

What are the main challenges facing Generations X and Y? Are conditions easier for them than they were for their predecessors, or are things more difficult?

Each generation has had to confront its own challenges through the course of various changes they have undergone. Undoubtedly, the world of today’s young people is much more complex than that of their elders. But it is also clear that they are much better prepared and they have better tools for dealing with these challenges. Certainly, the supply of jobs is much more precarious in today’s labour market.

On the other hand, declining birth rates in recent years mean that fewer people will be applying for jobs compared with what happened during the baby boom. Many young people say that their elders have made it harder for them by providing them with a comfortable childhood. At the same time, social systems do not make it easier to become economically independent and achieve the same standards. This difficult transition will leave a sense of frustration that will certainly be hard for young workers to deal with in coming years.

 

“Generation Y and the Labour Market: Models for HR Management.” Cristina Simón and Gayle Allard, Instituto de Empresa, Spain

 

 

Getting real

I have come across the company 37signals over the last few years. They demonstrate a refreshing approach for smaller companies who successfully compete with corporates in technology and other sectors.

 

Celtar will soon be relaxing on holidays for 2 weeks – so we wish you a warm summer.

Regards

Billy

 

 

“I don’t have anything against big business,” Jason Fried says. “It’s just not for me.” So he quit and in 1999 started the Chicago-based digital design firm 37signals with three other designers.

But Fried’s jaunt as a corporate employee wasn’t his last experience with big business. Thanks to his firm’s innovative and simple approach to Web design, big clients soon were knocking on his door, and Fried once again found himself working for some of the biggest businesses around—but this time as a contractor and not as an employee.

Fried grimaces as he recalls his encounters with big business: “The decisions being made by these large corporate clients were just so irrational,” he says. “Big business loves mediocrity: They put process first and product second. As long as you go through this process and all these objectives are met along the way, then what comes out at the end is considered successful, no matter what. It doesn’t up set anyone, but doesn’t make them happy, either. It’s safe. I can’t deal with that.”

Still wary of the waste and brain drain of the corporate world, Fried started focusing on reducing his dependency on all things big business. Now his own firm is lean and mean, with only eight employees who are developing a new generation of online services, including the popular project-management software Basecamp.

Fried built his business with a philosophy he calls “Getting Real,” a way of thinking that inspires those with limited budgets and few resources to create successful products. While Fried’s simple, streamlined approach focuses on software development, the principles apply to any small business challenge requiring you to do more with less.

Fried’s mantra about how to be successful in business is simple: Less is more. Being a small business is better than being a big one. Having few resources is better than having unlimited resources. Having less time is better than having all the time in the world. Indeed, having less of anything is better than having more—except when it comes to happiness.

 

Necessity Is the Mother of Invention

Today, 37signals and the Web-based applications it creates (Basecamp, Campfire, Backpack and Ruby on Rails) have a near cult-like following among more than half-a-million users. More than 60,000 people regularly read the firm’s blog, Fried’s online, self-published book about his streamlined approach to software development—generated almost $200,000 in revenues during its first four months of publication. Fried is regularly invited to speak at top technology conferences and his design work and software products offer some of the most influential approaches in his industry. No list of “hot new tech companies” is complete without a mention of 37signals and Fried. Any review of the “next big thing” typically cites his firm or one of its products.

What’s ironic is that Fried never set out to become the next big thing. His Basecamp project-management system was born out of personal need. “We created it initially for ourselves because we couldn’t find a project-management product that worked for us,” he says. At the time, Fried and his team were scattered among four different cities on two continents. The solution they developed to manage their projects for large clients soon caught on with the clients themselves, who wanted something similar to manage their own work.

Now, projects at some of the world’s largest companies are managed with software created by a business that subleases a few desks in a warehouse district west of downtown Chicago.

 

Using Limitations to Your Advantage

After graduating 14 years ago with a finance degree from the University of Arizona, Fried returned to his hometown of Chicago. When he started 37signals a few years later, he decided to remain in the Windy City rather than move to Silicon Valley with the rest of the tech start-ups. Fried’s decision was a good one, since his path to success breaks much of the Valley’s conventional wisdom about start-ups. For example, he had no venture-capital backing, though more than 25 firms had offered to invest. Fried says he has no need for their money or connections because Basecamp is already profitable, in part because of Fried’s radically low overhead. “I can only speak about developing software,” he says. “Perhaps if you’re starting a manufacturing company, you need lots of capital to purchase machinery, but with our business, many of the cost barriers have been removed.”

Instead of spending lots of money on services his start-up didn’t need, Fried chose to keep it simple. For example, during the first year, Basecamp was hosted on a single server that cost about $150 per month. The products developed by 37signals were all created using open-source, free software.

And instead of requiring his employees to spend hundreds of hours of their time developing products, Fried obsessively controls the scope of projects. One key to his “Getting Real” approach (see below) is scaling back the number of features on a product so that it isn’t bogged down in unnecessary bells and whistles. “If you have all the time and money in the world, you become Microsoft,” Fried says. “And now, even Microsoft can’t deliver new products: There’s no urgency.”

 

Success in All Sizes

In reality, the “Getting Real” concept is a more real-world approach to small business than the often mythologised—and likewise, demonized—tech start-up model. Access to venture capital is a rarity in most Main Street retail and service companies. Capital is available for financing equipment, but it comes with plenty of strings and requirements attached.

Fried’s notion of doing more with less resonates with small-business owners who, like him, have discovered that you don’t have to be big to be great. They understand that success doesn’t only come in extra-large. As more businesses operate in a virtual world, small businesses can develop new and efficient products that allow them to compete head-to-head with the big guys — without becoming big guys themselves.

After all, successfully running an efficient business with a low overhead that makes the owner and employees happy is the goal that drives all of us in that huge part of our lives called work. It’s a goal that Jason Fried already has a handle on.

 

Back to the Basics: How to use your (lack of) size to your advantage

While developed with software companies in mind, Fried’s principles can apply to any small business that strives to do more with less.

 

Underdo your competition: Businesses get caught up in a cycle of adding more features and services. Great opportunities exist for those who create the same products, but with more simplicity and ease of use.

 

Create services you would use: Few great product and service ideas come as a result of groupthink and committee meetings. Democracy is great, Fried says, but in the product-development arena, it rarely leads to great results. Great products are the result of solving problems for yourself — and then offering solutions to others.

Fund yourself: The more money you have, the more you’ll waste, Fried says. He admits that outside funding is necessary for capital-intensive businesses, but for many service businesses—especially those utilizing technology or operating online—being able to turn your business concept into reality is getting less expensive by the day.

 

Take half: List all the features you’d like on your product and cut them in half, Fried advises. Then, cut that list in half. Being driven by time and budget rather than by your dream list of features will result in a much more solid, workable product that won’t break the bank.

 

Call off the meetings: Fried is not a fan of endless meetings or documents filled with specifications and details that no one reads. He’d prefer to focus on the essentials — and those don’t require a lot of meetings.

 

Interruption is the enemy of productivity: “Most companies are built to promote interruption, because they think that’s the same as collaboration. It isn’t.”

 

Don’t hire people: Is the work that’s burdening you really necessary? What if you don’t just do it? Can you solve the problem with a change of practice instead?

 

Founders: Jason Fried, Ernest Kim, Carlos Segura

Funding: Undisclosed sum from Jeff Bezos, CEO, Amazon.com, and the first outside investor in 37signals,

Employees: 8

 

37signals.com

Mybusiness.com

Guardian.co.uk

 

Celtar update

Background

Billy Linehan is a specialist management adviser working with entrepreneurs and leaders of organisations. He set up Celtar in 2008 to meet the needs of business and organisation leaders so they could access high quality consultancy advice that is designed specifically for them. As independent management consultants we support managers, directors and stakeholders of organisations by facilitating the achievement of their objectives.

Billy has set up and managed a unit of 35 consultants, working with businesses in central London and his experience includes advising owner managers across many sectors. He advises growing SMEs as a tutor and Business Counsellor on several IMI (Irish Management Institute) business development programmes and provides a mentoring service to clients of Dublin city enterprise board.

Billy holds the CMC qualification (Certified Management Consultant), is a member of the Institute of Management Consultants and of Blanchardstown Chamber of Commerce. He continues his learning through working with innovative clients, attending workshops and conferences. As a promoter of training and development Billy co-founded the Highway to Learning network (www.h2l.ie). His training offer includes a series of practical workshops on strategic planning and performance management. Billy is also the publisher of the INCITE ezine, spreading the news of better business practices to intra/entrepreneurs.

Celtar associates and business partners

Through quality assured associates and business partners, clients can access a wide network of experts in financial management, marketing, production management, market research, human resource management, technical consultancy on environmental and waste management, personal communications and supply chain management. 

Selected client quotes

“Being an owner manager and having Billy available to advise and challenge on key issues has proved invaluable to the company’s strategic development. His professional and honest business mentoring has made a significant contribution to our company’s growth over the last three years.”   

 “As a developing company, we look to Billy to guide the Management Team through this time of growth and change. I am delighted with the results and look forward to continuing our partnership in the future.”

“For a no nonsense approach and evaluation of business management processes Billy is excellent in his ability to quickly identify, and offer solutions to, areas of management that haven’t been performing as we initially believed. Billy showed us new systems that have resulted in major benefits to the company’s performance in response to the needs of our customers and staff.”

 “If you are looking for a coach to throw roses at you at every hands turn and tell you how great you are, then Billy is not your man. However if you want an honest informative assessment of where you are and where you should be, I could not recommend Billy highly enough.”

“The work that Billy did for us was thorough, systematic, and well managed.  It did prove valuable to have an ‘outsider’ – someone who was independent, to carry out this work.”  

 

 

Lisbon vote, a lost opportunity today

As a history graduate I am an unabashed fan of European integration and the European project, and the vote on the Lisbon treaty today was a lost opportunity, for Ireland.

Committment to the European project has been lost in a fog of mistruths and lies from far left and far right. A sad day for representative democracy which demonstrates the lack of leadership by mainsteam politicians.
Who are the dark side? Sinn Fein as an anti military alliance group, various Catholic fundamentalist organisations and a new entrant who profess themselves as pro European but are the puppets of neo con US interests. All combining with the growing influence of the Murdoch press.

 

New company Takeaway.ie – check it out

On

It is always inspiring to be an adviser to a new start-up, acknowledging the amount of work (and blood, sweat and tears) that has been invested by the two entreprenneurs.

 

Online food ordering is the way of the future and Irish company Takeaway.ie is leading the way. The idea is simple; one website, multiple outlets and quick simple online ordering directly to your favourite restaurant.

 

www.takeaway.ie has been live for less than a month and is already in partnership with a broad selection of food outlets including premium brands like Insomnia, Bombay Pantry and Bistro Bianconi.

 

Takeaway.ie owners Ciara Traynor and Anthony Kauffmann have recognised a niche in the Irish food market; connecting modern technology with an increasingly cosmopolitan consumer base.

As web developers they know what works on the Internet and it was through their work that they came up with the idea.

 

“We were working late one night on a project and we were starving” says Ciara Traynor. “Of course could we find a leaflet?  Anthony wanted pizza and I fancied an Indian, so we got to thinking, why isn’t there one site where all this is available?”

 

First came the idea for www.takeaway.ie. Then came the technology.

“We came up with a direct online ordering system that is user friendly for the consumer and extremely efficient for the restaurant on the receiving end”.

 

“The idea is that we are a one stop shop for ordering food nationally”, says Ciara Traynor. “Already our Dublin range of restaurants is growing and we are also delighted to have outlets in Galway, Mayo and Limerick”.

“The Irish consumer is very sophisticated and Irish food outlets recognise that. People want choice and they want quick access to it with no fuss”.

 

www.takeaway.ie currently hosts multiple food outlets; Italian, Chinese, Indian, Thai and office catering. (Quantifying is pleasantly difficult as new outlets are signing up every day).

There is no set up charge to restaurants on www.takeaway.ie, it’s free for website users.

 

Contact Ciara Traynor and Anthony Kauffmann for interview at (01) 477 3931 or email press@takeaway.ie.

 

Onl

 

 

Another vacancy – sales position

I am using the blog to see if it is useful for filling vacancies for client companies.

Topflight, Ireland’s leading tour operator, requires an assistant sales manager who has a passion for customer service

Key Responsibilities
• Manage a team of 10 sales staff, including telesales
• Coordinate promotions and other activities with the marketing department
• Responsible for relationship managment with key partners in the travel retail trade
• Coach and train individual sales staff to highest performance and customer service
• Working with sales manager on reports and incentives

Person specification
We are looking for an ambitious and experienced commercial sales professional. The candidate should have the ability to lead and motivate teams to work to targets and timeframes . Strong communication and interpersonal skills are very important as are excellent reporting and presentation skills.

Experience is required in the following
• successful team leading and supervision, sales team management
• working in sales in the travel industry, not essential though would be beneficial
• 5 years plus successful sales experience
• target driven and innovative, ability to inspire others
• successful sales coach, showing others how to successfully meet customers needs

A degree or equivalent third level qualification would be attractive but is not essential, strong sales training or sales qualification is more desirable

 

Interview with Brad Bird director of Ratatouille on innovation

The Quarterly: How important is team dynamics to innovation and creativity?

Brad Bird: Making a film, you have all these different departments, and what you’re trying to do is find a way to get them to put forth their creativity in a harmonious way. Otherwise, it’s like you have an orchestra where everybody’s playing their own music. Each individual piece might be beautiful, but together they’re crazy.

The Quarterly: How do you build and lead a team that collaborates in the way you’re describing?

Brad Bird: When I directed The Iron Giant, I inherited a team that was totally broken—a bunch of miserable people who had just gone through a horrific experience on a previous film that had bombed. When the time came for animators to start showing me their work, I got everybody in a room. This was different from what the previous guy had done; he had reviewed the work in private, generated notes, and sent them to the person.

For my reviews, I got a video projector and had an animator’s scenes projected onto a dry-erase board. I could freeze a frame and take a marker and show where I thought things should be versus where they were. I said, “Look, this is a young team. As individual animators, we all have different strengths and weaknesses, but if we can interconnect all our strengths, we are collectively the greatest animator on earth. So I want you guys to speak up and drop your drawers. We’re going to look at your scenes in front of everybody. Everyone will get humiliated and encouraged together. If there is a solution, I want everyone to hear the solution, so everyone adds it to their tool kit. I’m going to take my shot at what I think will improve a scene, but if you see something different, go ahead and disagree. I don’t know all the answers.”

So I started in: “I think the elbow needs to come up higher here so that we feel the thrust of this action.” “I’m not seeing the thought process on the character here.” “Does anybody disagree? Come on, speak up.” The room was silent because with the previous director, anyone who dared to say anything got their head chopped off.

For two months, I pushed and analyzed each person’s work in front of everybody. And they didn’t speak up. One day, I did my thing, and one of the guys sighed. I shouted, “What was that?” And he said, “Nothing man, it’s OK.” And I said, “No, you sighed. Clearly, you disagree with something I did there. Show me what you’re thinking. I might not have it right. You might. Show me.” So he came up, and I handed him the dry-erase marker. He erased what I did. Then he did something different and explained why he thought it ought to be that way. I said, “That’s better than what I did. Great.” Everybody saw that he didn’t get his head chopped off. And our learning curve went straight up. By the end of the film, that animation team was much stronger than at the beginning, because we had all learned from each other’s strengths. But it took two months for people to feel safe enough to speak up.

The Quarterly: How does your experience with that team compare with your work leading creative teams at Pixar?

Brad Bird: When Pixar asked me to take over Ratatouille, the project had been in development for five years but was not in any shape to produce as a movie. There was a moment, at the very beginning of my involvement, when I was in a room full of about 30 people. At this stage, the rats in the movie had been articulated. Articulation is where they design how the muscles and controls work on the characters. Because people were worried about the audience’s reaction to rats, all of them were designed to walk on two legs.

I thought that was a mistake. I knew it would be an expensive use of resources, at that point in the process, to rearticulate the rats, but I said, “We have to get them so that they walk on all fours. And Remy, the protagonist rat, has to be able to walk not only on all fours but up on two legs.” Everybody said, “Ugh!” because they had spent a year making the rats look good walking on two legs. If you simply took those models, bent them over, and put them on all fours, their hips didn’t work and things just looked wrong. They were designed to be upright.

One of the guys challenged me. He said, “I want to know why you’re doing this.” Now, I had gone into this film reluctantly. It’s not what I was looking to do after The Incredibles. And there was a part of me that wanted to say, “Because I’m the director, that’s why. Do you want to take this problematic thing over?”

But I stopped and thought for a second. I thought, these guys have been sent down blind alleys for a couple of years. They want to know that I’m not doing anything lightly and that if I’m going to make them do a bunch more work, it’s for a reason. So I said, “This movie is about a rat who wants to enter the human world. We have to make that a visual choice for the character. If you have all of the rats walking on two legs, there’s no separation between him and the other rats. If we have this separation as a visual device, we can see the character make his transformation and choose to be on two legs, and he can become more or less ratty, depending on his emotional state. That brings the audience into the character’s mind.”

I spent six minutes saying all this and the guy was initially scowling. But gradually the scowl went away, and he said, “OK.” Once I gave that answer, everyone felt, “OK, we’re on this ship and we’re going toward a definite destination.”

The Quarterly: It sounds like you spend a fair amount of time thinking about the morale of your teams.

Brad Bird: In my experience, the thing that has the most significant impact on a movie’s budget—but never shows up in a budget—is morale. If you have low morale, for every $1 you spend, you get about 25 cents of value. If you have high morale, for every $1 you spend, you get about $3 of value. Companies should pay much more attention to morale.

Before I got the chance to make films myself, I worked on a number of badly run productions and learned how not to make a film. I saw directors systematically restricting people’s input and ignoring any effort to bring up problems. As a result, people didn’t feel invested in their work, and their productivity went down. As their productivity fell, the number of hours of overtime would increase, and the film became a money pit.

The Quarterly: Engagement, morale—what else is critical for stimulating innovative thinking?

Brad Bird: The first step in achieving the impossible is believing that the impossible can be achieved. There was a point during the making of The Incredibles where we had a company meeting. We have them about twice a year, and anybody can bring up concerns. Somebody raised their hand and said, “Is The Incredibles too ambitious?” Ed Catmull said, “I don’t know” and looked over at me. I just said, “No! If there’s one studio that needs to be doing stuff that is ‘too ambitious,’ it’s this one. You guys have had nothing but success. What do you do with it? You don’t play it safe—you do something that scares you, that’s at the edge of your capabilities, where you might fail. That’s what gets you up in the morning.”

The Quarterly: If you ask most companies how they innovate, they’ll say, “Know your customer. Find out what your customer really wants you to do.” It sounds like you think about innovation differently.

Brad Bird: Our goal is different because if you say you’re making a movie for “them,” that automatically puts you on an unsteady footing. The implication is, you’re making it for a group that you are not a member of—and there is something very insincere in that. If you’re dealing with a storytelling medium, which is a mechanized means of producing and presenting a dream that you’re inviting people to share, you’d better believe your dream or else it’s going to come off as patronizing.

So my goal is to make a movie I want to see. If I do it sincerely enough and well enough—if I’m hard on myself and not completely off base, not completely different from the rest of humanity—other people will also get engaged and find the film entertaining.

The Quarterly: What does Pixar do to stimulate a creative culture?

Brad Bird: If you walk around downstairs in the animation area, you’ll see that it is unhinged. People are allowed to create whatever front to their office they want. One guy might build a front that’s like a Western town. Someone else might do something that looks like Hawaii. Steve Jobs initially didn’t like this idea, but John Lasseter said, “We’ve got to let it go a little crazy where the animators are.” John believes that if you have a loose, free kind of atmosphere, it helps creativity.

Then there’s our building. Steve Jobs basically designed this building. In the center, he created this big atrium area, which seems initially like a waste of space. The reason he did it was that everybody goes off and works in their individual areas. People who work on software code are here, people who animate are there, and people who do designs are over there. Steve put the mailboxes, the meetings rooms, the cafeteria, and, most insidiously and brilliantly, the bathrooms in the center—which initially drove us crazy—so that you run into everybody during the course of a day. He realized that when people run into each other, when they make eye contact, things happen. So he made it impossible for you not to run into the rest of the company.

The Quarterly: Is there anything else you’d highlight that contributes to creativity around here?

Brad Bird: One thing Pixar does—which is a knockoff of old-school, Walt-era 1940s Disney—is to have all kinds of optional classes. They call it “PU,” or Pixar University. If you work in lighting but you want to learn how to animate, there’s a class to show you animation. There are classes in story structure, in Photoshop, even in Krav Maga, the Israeli self-defense system. Pixar basically encourages people to learn outside of their areas, which makes them more complete. Sometimes, people even move from one area to another.

The Quarterly: On the one hand, you are a leader here. On the other hand, you sound like a bit of a subversive. How do you do both things?

Brad Bird: I think the best leaders are somewhat subversive, because they see something a different way. And I’m not leading by myself. My producer, John Walker, and I are famous for fighting openly, because he’s got to get it done and I’ve got to make it as good as it can be before it gets done. If you look at the extra materials on The Incredibles DVD, there’s a moment where we’re fighting about something, and John says, “Look, I’m just trying to get us across the line.” And I say, “I’m trying to get us across the line in first place.”

I don’t want him to tell me, “Whatever you want, Brad,” and then we run out of resources. I want him to tell me, “If you do X, we’re not going to be able to do Y.” I’ll fight, but I’ll have to make the choice. I love working with John because he’ll give me the bad news straight to my face. Ultimately, we both win. If you ask within Pixar, we are known as being efficient. Our movies aren’t cheap, but the money gets on the screen because we’re open in our conflict. Nothing is hidden.

The Quarterly: We’ve been talking a lot about how you promote innovation. What undermines it?

Brad Bird: Passive-aggressive people—people who don’t show their colors in the group but then get behind the scenes and peck away—are poisonous. I can usually spot those people fairly soon and I weed them out.

The Quarterly: What kinds of leaders inhibit innovation?

Brad Bird: When I first started at Disney, the old master animators were slowly leaving, and there was an animator in his 40s starting to direct films there; management was sort of grooming him to take over animation at the studio. Anyway, he had taken over a film and had a bunch of us meet in his office. The first thing that came out of his mouth was, “I’m here to teach you. I’m satisfied with what I do.” In that opening statement, he lost me because I had already worked with the old Disney masters—and they were never satisfied.

It’s surreal to think about now, but my first real, formal teachers in animation were the best animators in the world. I’d started a film when I was 11, and a friend of the family knew the composer of the Disney films, who took me into the studio. I met a lot of the great old master animators. Their worst animation was 1,000 times better than this new director’s best, yet they would get to the end of a film and say, “I just started to feel like I was understanding the character, and I want to go back and do the whole thing over. Can’t wait for next time!” They were masters of the form, but they had the attitude of a student. This guy taking over the studio had only done a few pieces of pretty good animation, and he was totally satisfied. Could not have been less inspiring.

The Quarterly: How would you compare the Disney of your early career with Pixar today?

Brad Bird: When I entered Disney, it was like a classic Cadillac Phaeton that had been left out in the rain. It was this amazing machine that was beautiful but old and getting a little decrepit. Still, they had the best system on earth at that time. They had the best talent. The movies were still well executed, if uninspired.

But Disney at this time was pared down. They were making one film every three years rather than a film every year or year and a half, as they had at Disney’s height. Walt had been gone for more than a decade, and the old guys were leaving. The company’s thought process was not, “We have all this amazing machinery—how do we use it to make exciting things? We could go to Mars in this rocket ship!” It was, “We don’t understand Walt Disney at all. We don’t understand what he did. Let’s not screw it up. Let’s just preserve this rocket ship; going somewhere new in it might damage it.”

Walt Disney’s mantra was, “I don’t make movies to make money—I make money to make movies.” That’s a good way to sum up the difference between Disney at its height and Disney when it was lost. It’s also true of Pixar and a lot of other companies. It seems counterintuitive, but for imagination-based companies to succeed in the long run, making money can’t be the focus.

Speaking personally, I want my films to make money, but money is just fuel for the rocket. What I really want to do is to go somewhere. I don’t want to just collect more fuel.

 

 

We’re a family business. We do what we like and like what we do.”

“We’re a family business. We do what we like and we like what we do”

Topflight are a leading Irish tour operator, and a client. I liked this piece about them as it gives a flavour of the entrepreneur behind the company.

It’s cold outside. It’s starting to rain. The phones are hopping at the Topflight offices in central Dublin. Some customers are desperate to escape the country.It’s like a modern version of Rick’s Cafe in Casablanca. One caller wants to book tickets for four people. To leave tomorrow, if possible. You wonder whether they’ll bring luggage or just make do with the clothes on their backs. Either way, it’s all good news for managing director Tony Collins. As he stands for photographs, he explains that he’s been out the night before with some Czech colleagues. Still, he looks no worse for wear. The country’s largest ski tour operator, Collins says that his fundamental belief at Topflight is that the customer has to be the continuous focus. “They choose to give you money. They can choose not to. You do things right and hopefully that filters down to the bottom line,” he says. The affable Collins is long enough in the industry to be aware of its vagaries. After leaving school in Cabra prior to his 16th birthday, he went to work as a motorcycle courier with An Post’s predecessor, Post & Telegraphs. “I liked having a bit of money in my pocket,” he explains. “I’d had a job of some sort or another since I was 12, working in a pub or doing milk rounds. I felt it was important to have another income coming into the family.” But his plan at P&T to get into electronic engineering fell through after a fall from his bike put him behind a desk, an outcome that didn’t have much appeal. A deluge of CVs later, he secured a job with a travel agency on Dublin‘s Mary Street, and would later move on to work with Thomas Cook and Ryan Hotels. At night, he studied for his Leaving Certificate and then a marketing qualification.

 “I did a four-year stint at an agency in Drogheda, and in 1983 decided to open my own business. There was a depression and everyone told me I was mad,” he remembers. With a £5,000 loan from AIB, the then 31-year-old bought a shop on Dorset Street. It made money in its first year. In 1990 he bought Topflight, which at the time was in bad shape. “I’m in business 25 years now, and we’ve made money in every one of those,” he says. “That’s a pretty good record in our industry.” Last year Topflight generated sales of €50m and made a profit of “between €1m and €2m” says Collins. Typically, it sells between 65,000 and 70,000 holidays a year.

The big changes in the sector happened later in the ’80s when UK operators began muscling in on the Irish market. The advent of Ryanair and, later, Aer Lingus’s decision in 2001 to revamp itself on the low-cost model, made it a much tougher market for travel agents as commissions were slashed and the price of flights plummeted. “The real impact on the tour operators here was that the UK heavyweights began mopping up most of the Irish businesses.” But Topflight has soldiered on alone, despite the usual offers from competitors, none of which have yet proved tempting to Collins. “We’re a family business. We do what we like and we like what we do,” explains Collins. “Whenever the future looked bright for us, I didn’t want to sell. When things looked bad, nobody was interested anyway.” He says that the company is operating on far tighter margins than 10 years ago, but adds that in each of the past four years the company has achieved at least 20pc sales growth. “We don’t go for high margins. We look for modest margins, reasonable growth, stability and sustainability,” he says. “That has served us well. We’re not greedy.”

Meanwhile, Topflight has captured the lion’s share of the ski market, while its sun holidays prove popular too.

Anticipation “You’ve got to anticipate what people might like and match your client base with the product,” says Collins, who adds that the company operates in the “upper to middle” price margin bracket. “We’d never do anything that’s two-star, and rarely even carry three-star properties,” he adds. “Nobody wants rubbish any more.” Ski holidays now account for about one third of Topflight’s business (it was recently awarded the accolade of Ireland‘s best tour operator — the 14th year in a row it has received it), with holidays to sunspots such as Portugal, Italy and the Canary Islands forming a large part of the remainder. Around 30pc of Topflight’s sun holidays sold annually are, unsurprisingly, booked in January. While skiing has proved popular, Collins (who likes to head for the piste in Austria and Andorra) admits that, in respect of the Irish market, the level of business is probably heading for a plateau.

His sons, Anthony and Neil, also run a separate online business, Directski.com, in which Collins has a small stake. Topflight, meanwhile, has been branching out, providing foreign wedding services and also targeting groups heading off on golf trips, for instance. It has also begun offering sporting trips to schools, including ski, rugby and soccer packages. But as the economy begins to ease off the accelerator, Collins says it’s evident that at least some customers are being a “little bit more cautious” about booking. “This sector isn’t recession proof,” he explains. “It has to be very strongly customer-focused.” “We’re going for growth this year, but it will be more modest than in previous years. We’re certainly aware that there’s a nervousness out there and that people are watching their money.” Roulette may be out, but it seems people will always need their sun fix, however.

From the Irish Independent newspaper
  

 

Grow your business

The Business Development Programme at the Irish Management Institute is now recruiting, aimed at owners, directors and successors in SMEs. Starting in May 2008 it is Ireland’s premium course for entrepreneurs and it has contributed to the transformation of many businesses.

See http://www.courses.imi.ie/courses/Published/Business_Dev_60.shtml for further details and quote ref. 007
With a generous subsidy from FAS I recognise it as the best course available for owners and directors who wish to plan business growth over the next 5 years.

 

Information technology manager wanted

I had intended that this blog would be a useful site to provide information on job opportunities with client organisations.

Topflight www.topflight.ie a leading Irish tour operator are looking for a IT manager, job entails responsibilities to

Develop, implement and manage the IT strategy, ensuring its alignment with Topflight’s business goals, To ensure maximum availability of computer systems throughout the Company, Responsible for the provision of IT infrastructure services including desktop applications, Local and / or Wide area networks, IT security and telecommunications, Working with senior management to propose, agree and deliver IT service to defined Service Level Agreements  . . . . .  see below for more details 

www.loadzajobs.ie/view-job-details.jobs?jobId=1145963

 

Accountants wanted!

Two clients are currently looking for accountants.

Filtrex are looking for a part-time accountant to run their finance function, see www.filtrex.ie

KDA Accountants need a newly qualified accountant to join their growing firm, see www.kdaaccountants.ie

 

Starting . . . . . . .

Hi, this blog is about sharing ideas and information on general business issues with a focus on Irish companies – but relevant elsewhere. It follows on from the monthly ezine Incite which was issued first in January 2002.

My interests and future subjects will concern business advice, consultancy, the value of state support for business, role of Enterprise Ireland and cross border “bodies”, sectors (technology, construction, engineering and design), strategic planning for SMEs / SMBs, practical tools for planning, inward investment to Ireland, external opportunities for Irish companies, characteristics of entrepreneurs, leadership, organisational development, debunking psychobabble and other management fashions.

 

Hello world!

Welcome to my blog.