The Burble
You know you have been flying too much when you know your way around airport without knowing which country you’re actually in; unless its Heathrow which is the exception that proves the rule.
You’ve been in the air too much when you begin to recognise aircrew and can actually tell before you take off whether they are going to look after you well. But the real indication is when you get an invite from your favourite airline to a weekend launch of something.
Back to a theme of mine that I have blogged about before – Self Driving Cars. I am fascinated by the fact that people can see a time when you won’t need a steering wheel in a car and you’ll be able to get into a car and sit back and do anything you want. I can see a revolution coming in how people get around, work and interact with each other. With society relying so much on the car any change in how it works is going to have a profound affect.
In a small way Hanoi represents the future of the car. Last weekend found me and my family in a taxi trying to get from the airport to the hotel in the French Quarter of Hanoi. My son cheerfully described Hanoi as like Milton Keynes until we got into the center of the town which he then described as mayhem. In two years Hanoi has gone from a city that is all motorbikes to one that is being overrun with cars. And unlike bikes cars in Hanoi don’t swerve around you. And the point here is that cars being driven by computer, or robot depending on your view point, are much more likely to stop or steer round you than crash making towns and cities a much better place in the future.
Autonomous cars are coming and while there will be a long period of time before they come into their own there is one question we need to ask. Will they work?
Hopefully he title has piqued your interest and so I would like to introduce an old colleague and friend of mine Colin Gautrey. Colin has been one of those individuals who I probably talk to less than once a year and yet who’s advice and support I value a huge amount. His focus is on Influence a topic that is one of the most important for anyone to understand. Being able to influence others, in a business or personal environment is one of the key skills that we all need to learn.
So please read on and see what you think. I spend almost all my days influencing people in 8 countries in Asia to do different things in different ways. Its probably the only way to really make things happen in any organization of more than 2 people. As Colin says
‘When you have to engage with someone, and you have a difficult message to deliver, a decision needs to be made about how direct and assertive you can be. Put another way, you need to decide how tactful and diplomatic you have to be to avoid causing offense.
Source: When to be More or Less Diplomatic‘
There are more men on corporate boards named John, Robert, William or James than there are women on boards altogether – The Washington Post
As you will have seen from a previous post – Let’s take a stand – I am a strong supporter of inclusion. Articles like this one reinforce the need to keep trying to make a difference.
And there are many reasons why it makes sense to do so for any business. Apart from fairness alone (50% of the population are women) results improve for more balanced companies and decision-making becomes more rounded. Groupthink is avoided.
And with more women running businesses its possible they will want to deal with companies who recognize this fact. According to research undertaken across East Asia in 2013 between 38% and 47% of all SME’s businesses are owned by women. With SME’s accounting for the majority of economic output in most countries women will have an ever growing impact.
Probably sensible to be prepared then.
Change will take time but let’s keep going.
As a child that grew up in the UK in the 70s I saw much of the industrial strife driven by Red Robbo and his band of merry men (motto; If it works once make sure that never happens again). And of course they would be very merry men (no women allowed anywhere near the factory floor) because they never worked for more than one or two hours a day. And they never worked more than one or two hours because they would then need to go on strike.
And what were they striking about?
The corporate tax rate in the US legally ranges from 15 to 35%. Many companies end up paying far, far less. In a report released today, the Institute for Policy Studies found (pdf) that seven of the country’s 30 largest companies by revenue paid out more to their chief executives than they did in corporate taxes in 2013, despite the […] http://qz.com/298543/these-ceos-make-more-than-their-companies-pay-in-corporate-taxes/ I repost this article with one intention in mind – to get people talking and discussing the issues raised. Whatever the situation, and companies pay taxes in a myriad of ways that are often overlooked in articles such as this it, the headline alone should be enough to prompt questions on why this should ever get published. Why should a CEO be accused of being paid more than the tax bill of the company. What’s it to you and me? I’m sure the CEO works very hard for their money (I almost wrote his money but that would been unfair – pretty accurate but unfair) . So what is it to you and me? Well actually its a lot and it highlights the growing disconnect between those with an appearance of being ‘At the Top’ and the rest. And unless that gap is narrowed or some sense of fairness rebuilt the inevitable will happen. People will vote for change or simply no longer support companies who do not appear to be being fair. And this pressure for change is growing. Back in 1993 the Royal Society for the encouragement of Arts, Manufacturers and Commerce (RSA) ‘initiated a business-led inquiry into ‘the role of business in a changing world’. The objective was to develop a shared vision of the company of tomorrow. The findings of the Inquiry, published in 1995, introduce the concept of an inclusive approach to business success in which a company:
For many of us in business today the idea of values and purpose, stakeholder relationships and maintaining a healthy reputation are all concepts we would understand. But so many of our companies today have clearly turned these into a set of words on the wall. Ignored by most people except in the corridors of the CEO where it makes sense to be an acolyte if you want to keep your job, but in most cases meaningless; possibly as witnessed by the fact that CEO’s allow their companies to be in a position where they pay themselves more than they apparently pay in tax. The Tomorrows Company research, based on the above findings advised companies that they would need a license to operate – that license being ‘granted’ by the buyers of goods and services from he company. It seems to me that, unless some businesses begin to change how they go about doing things, they will find their license to operate being taken away. People will begin to vote with their wallets – the ultimate weapon of mass destruction for any business. And quite frankly many of these businesses will deserve it. People have seen the global financial crises impacts on their daily lives and have aright to question whether it could happen again. And at the same time they see articles published like the one above that might suggest nothing, at least in the corporate world has changed much. People will vote – the question is only, when
One of the issues that business in general struggles with, as do many other areas of society, is the issue of equality. It’s something that we all know needs to be dealt with and there is a lot research that will tell you that business performs best when the company is truly representative of the society in which it operates.
Doing something about it seems to be beyond many people and businesses. But even small steps can help.
So I am going to take a stand on this issue. I’ve signed up for the HeforShe campaign being run by the UN; a campaign that seeks to involve both men and women in making the issue of equality one for the history books.
I’d like to encourage everyone to join in.
And if you need some more background on why this issue is important please watch the video. An obviously nervous Emma Watson gives some background on why the issue is important and why its an issue for all of us.
Take a look. Take a stand.
Insight for board directors and C Suite Executives
The business world has so many opportunities to reshape itself and drive better outcomes - we are only scratching at the surface of the change agenda and all the possibilities open to us. What ever happens next must embrace how we all work better together, how we are organised, the things we do and the many tools we use to make the change. Let’s make good things happen
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The Burble 