He's a regular Twitter

Excerpt from a mail I received this morning (spot the deliberate mistake)..."(Company X) is going big time in the social network. The CIO is a regular twitter. They hired a guy in marketing simply because he had 8,000 followers in twitter." Seems like an Oxbridge education and good work experience is no longer required. This is the new world we now live in...

Beau comme un camion

In English we would say “as good as new”. The French equivalent is “as beautiful as a lorry”. After having lived in France for over 10 years I don’t think their articulated trucks are any prettier than the average British hauler, but in any case after having cleaned both cars this weekend, inside and out, I thought it was an appropriate title for a posting. Sacrificing two afternoons to such a menial chore had some rather unexpected side effects – it allowed me to find the USB port in the Nissan Qashqai, to get up to date with the audio edition of last week’s Economist, to increase my collection of random pens (4 across the two cars), to find a previously mislaid set of house keys (which meant I could now, finally, get last week’s mail out of the mailbox), and to successfully relocate Sandie’s missing credit card holder (so why hadn’t they been cancelled a month ago?). Apart from car cleaning, the rest of the weekend included a pretty dreadful meal out on Saturday night, a fun family outing watching some eventing on Sunday morning, the departure of Jane the au pair from New Zealand, and Maxime turning purple and coming out in an all over spotty rash….he’s now back on antibiotics for the next 6 days. So just another normal weekend going into just another normal week, he says, sitting in his favourite hotel in Brussels.

WMD and Aidan's Chinese Revolution

A recent leader in the Economist caught my eye (http://www.economist.com/node/21543537). I enjoyed reading about the late Deng Xiaoping’s “southern tour” in 1992 which set the country on the path to reform that underpinned the success they have seen over the last 20 years. The article went on to say that China’s future success relies not taking more control, but actually on releasing their steely grip on power; “China’s bloody past has taught the Communist Party to fear chaos above all. But history’s other lesson is that those who cling to power end up with none….for China to succeed it must move away from the formula that has served it so well”.

I think I am at the start of my own little Chinese revolution. After the EMC Big Data day, the Fantastic Tavern event in London last month, and the realization of the last 2 to 3 years of the benefit of slowing down to achieve more; my eyes are being re-opened to the need to spend time thinking, thinking, and to open myself up to the real world and the new ideas and trends around me. I think I need to unpick at least part of the last decade of conditioning by Accenture methodology, process and ruthless execution. Maybe I’ve been too successful in reducing complexity to small tasks which are then executed by a team of highly conditioned analysts, consultants and managers eager for professional success. Maybe I need to start realizing that we live in a VUCA world (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Volatility,_uncertainty,_complexity_and_ambiguity) which is also a consumerist world populated with weapons of mass distraction (WPD) – just check out https://www.lsnglobal.com/.

Maybe all of this means that I need to think differently about how best to achieve a positive and lasting impact on real people and real companies rather than delivering just another large scale, contractually successfully project that doesn’t really fundamentally change the way a client’s business is done for the better…

Dust off the thinking cap

It’s been a long time since I attended an event that was both uplifting and demoralizing at the same time. On the 8th February I attended an event hosted by EMC on the subject of Big Data. Credit to EMC, they organized some wonderful, thought provoking speakers and kept the naked product sells to a minimum. The speakers included two TED fellows (www.ted.com), one of which was a professor of mathematics at Oxford University, and the other was another charismatic, uber smart guy who, now that he has charted the different phases of war such that he can successfully predict military outcomes, was essentially in the process of starting up and running a privately owned equivalent of the CIA, (there were also another 2-3 geniuses on show that day as well). The quality of the presentations and the ideas contained therein was fantastic – to be intellectually bombarded and challenged for a whole day was uplifting. The demoralizing part was the realization that this day was indeed exceptional, and that unfortunately the vast majority of my working life (and no doubt that of many other people), is all about reducing all manner of semi-complex and interrelated events to such a degree that all that life becomes is the efficient execution a very long list of simple tasks which in themselves are rarely stimulating or very meaningful.

The whole power and importance of thought and ideas was brought home to me in one conversation during the day with the CIO of a major payments company. He’s a Geordie from Gretna Road (the same street as where I went to school), so he tends to have pretty straight forward views… he said to me, “Aidan, the logistics today are so bad (no air conditioning and insufficient (uncomfortable plastic) chairs), that if this had been organized by one of my team, then I would be ripping them a new ar*shole tomorrow. The only reason I am still here is because the content and quality of thinking on show is excellent. This has been one of the most useful days I have had in a long time.” I don’t think I’ll ever get to the stage where I’ll say to my teams that the style of a deliverable isn’t important so long as the content is there, but the day really did underline for me the value of good quality thinking and how I don’t do enough of it as we all chase the next set of quarterly numbers.

Going through the motions

Rather frustratingly, I think I am starting to understand this expression better... I think going through the motions is when we all have so much mundane work to process and execute that it stops us from being passionate about what we do or should be doing to make a real difference to our companies and clients.

The 4 Stages of Learning

He can say many things many times, however one thing my father in law said to me the other day which stuck, was that he thinks that the four stages of learning are; apprendre, comprendre, restituer, maitriser. Or in English; learn, understand, restate, master. Personally I think there is a lot of truth in what he said.

Forward Planning

Things are typically very busy at the best of times. I don’t get (or make) enough time for reading. Hence the reason why I praise the Lord for Apple and the iPod – listening to the audio edition of the Economist magazine as I go running most days is the only way I can keep up with current affairs. One article that caught my ear recently (as opposed to my eye), was a review of a book that looked at the Obama marriage. The extract that stuck in my mind was,” …at his sister’s wedding Mr Obama went on to say that the key to marriage is finding a partner “who sees you as you deserve to be seen””…something which obviously implies criticism as well as support. The full article can be found at http://www.economist.com/node/21543128. No doubt this will find its way into the blog posting I am prepared for the children’s 18th birthday all about choosing the right partner…

February Half Time

As anticipated the first half of February was extremely busy with a lot of time spent travelling. The first few days of February were the tail end of our week skiing in Cauterets. The second week started with me leaving to go to Paris in the evening of Sandie’s birthday on the 5th. I successfully dodged an Air France strike on the Monday morning to get to London where I spent the rest of the week. However Air France had the last laugh when they “refunded”, (the polite way to say cancelled), my return flight on the following Sunday morning. Thankfully I had had a feeling that the journey back on the Sunday was going to be “challenging”, (and not just because I’d had a few too many pints the night before as I watched my team Newcastle get thumped 5-0 by Tottenham), so I was up out of bed at the crack of dawn leaving myself enough time to buy a new ticket at the airport at 7.20AM. I had 18 hours or so at home on the Sunday afternoon before heading back off to Belgium, where I spent the first three days of last week. It was nice to get home to Pau last Wednesday night and even nicer to be back in Biarritz with everyone a couple of days ago. It is school holidays for Maxime for the next two weeks so I will try and spend as much time as possible working from Biarritz as Mamie Cathie prepares to takes the strain (Maxime’s three Toulousan cousins are also turning up on next week).

Lover Boy

It’s Valentine’s Day (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Valentine%27s_day), and I have dinner lined up with Sandy. So far, so normal. Should I be worried that she has invited another man called Jean-Francois? Probably not given that dinner is with Sandy the boss not Sandie the wife. It’s been a really busy last 10 days but I’ll post a few notes and stories over the next couple of days.

Winter Hangover Cure II

A recent family trip to the ski station at Gourette after a good night out produced a surprisingly effective hangover cure. Today, after having spent an enjoyable afternoon in the pub with only George Orwell’s novel “1984” for company, the mountains have thrown up another remedy for one beer too many. Unfortunately scrabbling around on my hands and knees in the wet sludge at 11PM digging out a snowed in car using only a small red hand shovel was, despite the positive medicinal side effects, not very glamour (it is at times like that when I realize how little common sense I really have). On the upside, and there are three, at least the car was my own, it should also hopefully mean that I can escape for the day tomorrow to ride my horse in Orthez, and finally it will also allow me to pay an outstanding traffic violation fine in Pau…that’s what happens when you entrust the little Renault Twingo to the Kiwi au pair!