Strava and my imaginary friends

What’s all this about Big data? Everyone seems to be talking about social media, open, machine to machine and now personal data lockers http://www.economist.com/news/business/21568438-data-lockers-promise-help-people-profit-their-personal-information-know-thyself. Could this really be true? As the end of the year approaches I am managing to find a bit of time to play around with some of the gadgets I’ve bought over the last couple of months. I received a personal GPS and heart monitor for my birthday and which I now use religiously whenever I take my bike out or go running. I just worked out how to upload all this information onto the web. Apparently I can start to link to my friends to compare our respective workouts, speeds and power ratios. What’s even better is that whilst I try and find some real friends, the website www.strava.com gives me some imaginary friends to compare myself against, because “Frederic Tonera” and “Mark Telfer” are obviously real people…

BMI Book Cover

I read the following Economist article recently http://www.economist.com/news/leaders/21568389-state-can-do-some-things-encourage-people-eat-less-not-lot-fat-chance. When I first read the initial article, it fell into the “mildly interesting and thought provoking” category and no more. That was until I sat on very small plane with an extremely large chap. That particular flight was a most unpleasant experience – having the window seat whilst the man on your left literally overflowed into your own personal space wasn’t great. The fact that he drank Coke and ate Air France cookies the whole time just rubbed salt (or sugar) into the wound. That hour long flight got me thinking about the time when I lived in Denmark working on a project for a pharmaceutical company with a load of diabetes statisticians. Oh how a BMI tax sounds so seductive and easy…except for the fact that I recall endless debates about how exactly one measures BMI – it doesn’t seem to be that simple http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Body_mass_index. However, this theoretical debate, which would indeed limit one’s ability to implement a BMI tax, was not as compelling as the following letter from Dave Powell in Bristol who said, “muscle is a lot denser than fat, so BMI doesn’t necessarily indicate fitness. To give an example, Mo Farah, one of Britain’s outstanding Olympic champions, has a BMI of around 21 (based on height and weight figures I found) which puts him in the BMI’s healthy category. But another great Olympic champion, Steve Redgrave, at a towering six-foot five, would have had a BMI of around 26 at his peak, which would indicate that he is overweight. Taking things a step further Mike Tyson would have a BMI over 33, which was off the scale on the BMI calculator I used. Now I don’t know about you, but I’m not going to be first in the queue to inform Mr. Tyson that he is morbidly obese”… But the real moral of the story? As I got off the plane, the fat chap passed me my jacket and was the most charming of gentlemen. I suppose one really shouldn’t judge a person by his BMI score.

As good as it gets?

The kids have been sent off to Pau with their mother. I am now sitting on the couch in Biarritz waiting for the finals of my favourite UK TV programmes “Strictly Come Dancing” and “X-Factor” after also having managed to get the bike out for almost two hours this afternoon during their siesta. I’ve just tidied the house and there are bananas, fresh milk and vanilla ice-cream in the fridge. For a cleanliness obsessed 35 year father of a young family, does life get any better than this?

Dance, and bike, before the music starts

I often think that my initial spells in Oxford and Paris might have been more enjoyable if I had been readier to embrace the particularities and inherent character of each place. It’s not just a case of not dancing faster than the music it’s also a case of singing in tune with it. That said, every now and again it is beneficial to stand out from the crowd. Although I personally am, France is definitely not a country of early risers. Hence my delight to be able to get up at the crack of dawn and get a not insignificant part of my Christmas shopping done by 10.30AM this morning without having to fight with a flood of furious festive shoppers. Two hours in the mountains on my new bike in the afternoon added a feeling of virtue to the smug spring in my step. The upshot was that I felt at ease easting copious amounts of chocolate cake at Maxime’s second birthday party today in Biarritz. Round that all off with a healthy dose of X-Factor fun and it’s safe to say that it’s been a good day all round.

Getting back in the saddle

The problem with being passionate about the job that you do and the people in your team is that you leave yourself open to the risk that sometimes it makes you sad. Over the last couple of months the ideas have been coming as ever but the blog postings have not. I’ve been embroiled in a few rather complicated topics which have taken up a lot of mental and emotional energy. The sadness comes from the fact that despite my being personally committed and completely convinced of a plan that I had developed, another route has been chosen by senior management and it is one that is likely to have a human cost. I suppose it’s somewhat ironic then that when I started to write this particular posting, I found an earlier half-finished posting which started by saying, “there are so many different lines of reporting and management that decision making power is all over the place and that people who sit together on a daily basis have much more ability to influence things than people who are travelling remotely, regardless of level of seniority in a company.” As I sit here in my new role as influencer rather than one of the two owners or decision makers who are finalizing their top down 2013 plan, I must make a mental note to be careful for what I wish for.

So that somewhat cryptic explanation aside, what else has been going on since Gaston and Capucine’s second birthday…

I find that we as adult humans tend to try and create generalizations to serve as short cuts in this time starved world. Despite getting better at trying to avoid living life at one million miles an hour, I unfortunately do the same – I’ve recently managed to refine and express my classification of French people into two categories. I believe that all French people are either râleur-moteur, or râleur-casseur. Basically this means all French people like to complain, although half of them complain and then try to make things better (“moteur” or a motor for change) , whereas the other half complain and then do nothing positive (from the verb “casser” which means “to break”). The trick in France is to surround oneself with the first type of person. A real life example is after a French team complained that there were never any social activities for them, I then arranged a series of nights out. Hardly anyone turned up. They only came after I pointed out to them that this was something they had asked for. Vive la France.

At work, I have had a number of key new people join the team in France, the Netherlands and Switzerland. It’s been nice to see the building out of a team in line with the initial analysis and definition of a strategy that was done. Only six weeks after their arrival things are really starting to pan out nicely, and this quarter’s financial results should back that up. I’ve got a couple of new strong operational leads which means I can start thinking about what we need to do a few months down the line. I personally have spent an inordinate amount of time in various internal meetings most notably “quarterly business reviews”. A section of these meetings have always been dedicated to people’s views on 2013. This has been most surreal (and largely a waste of time) because this year’s annual planning process is massively top down (very different to last year’s consensus based approach). Sitting in internal meetings is bad enough, even worse when they talk about topics that you know that you, or they, can’t actually influence. Apart from that I’ve been travelling pretty much as normal taking in the sights of Madrid, Zurich, Paris, Amsterdam and Brussels. I’ve also been down to Lisbon, or Estoril to be more exact. I took it as an opportunity to stay with a friend and meet the latest addition to his little family.

At home we had a change of au pair – we swapped an outgoing Nebraskan for a more reserved Californian. Lauren has been with us for a few weeks now and is getting used to the noise, disorder and general hustle bustle of life in a wet and chilly French town.  I’ve also had a few more horse jumping competitions with some very average results, but I think I might have made a breakthrough (how many times have I found myself writing that over the last two years with this animal?!). We’ve addressed challenges associated with his back legs, when he turns left, when he turns right and now, most recently, with his head…Surely there can’t be much else I need to think about before he’ll jump a clear round for me? Anyway I persevere because Michel is convinced that the end is in sight…

So it’s been a busy two months although there is one thing that stands out for me. After significant personal investment in one particular topic a decision was made contrary to my recommendation. Both of the options being discussed revolved around a significant degree of change. I am now ok with the fact they chose a different option – that can always happen. The irony is that last week we sold a new medium sized contract to a new client, and as an immediate result they threw two months of discussion out of the window and opted to retain the status quo. What I take from it all, is that if you are genuine about wanting to do transformational change, then you need to do something different. Lots of people talk about transformation as a good thing, but there is a much smaller number of people are prepared to embrace a different daily life as a result. This power of inertia has made me more cautious about choosing which problems to try and fix – are people really ready for big solutions?!

Two today!

That's the number of new wrinkles I have on my face in the nose and mouth area today. It is also how old the twins are. Maybe their youthfulness is linked to my ageing. A good day (and indeed birthday weekend) was had by all. They may not completely understand the whole thing, but they are certainly very good at blowing out candles and eating cake. Normal service resumes tomorrow with a 6.40AM flight to Paris. Now there's something that definitely isn't helping the wrinkles!

It's about productivity, stupid

I am enjoying my new role at work. On those days when I am feeling positive, I really like the fact that I'm trying to create new, sustainable jobs. However on some days in some countries the focus is simply trying to get the whole of the existing team busy. This contrast across countries really got me thinking that if we want to be successful over the long term, we've got to do more than just keep people loaded with any type of work we can find. We really need each of them to be more productive. This can be either doing more with less e.g. more of the same type of output in a shorter time period, or, doing different more valuable work in the time available. However this does mean that if everybody is doing more (quantity or quality), then we really need to sell either more of the same, or sell more complex work, to keep these increasingly productive people occupied. That type of reflection was why I found the following article so interesting and worrying at the same time...http://www.ft.com/intl/cms/s/0/78e883fa-0bef-11e2-8032-00144feabdc0.html#axzz28S9d2U5m