Shanghai - it's the future

We just got back from Shanghai.  I have added some images to the Gallery.  The place amazes on a number of levels - not just because it is just about the most vibrant, dynamic City in the world...yeah, you’ve heard that before - so what’s interesting?  Well, here goes.  The most vibrant City in the world has been for five months just about the quietest.  You walk through the old town, no roadworks.  You take the water front walk along by the river and see the miles and miles of sky-scrapers and everything is relatively calm.  Too quiet.  It took a while for the penny to drop and then someone told me the story.  During the Shanghai Expo the Mayor had instructed that there be NO major building work happening during the Expo.  The international City - a gateway to China - would appear to all visitors as “finished”, not a work in progress.  So no cranes in sight.  No building.  Skyscrapers that are unfinished are covered in acres of plastic sheeting while the Expo is on-going.  

The motto for the City is:  “Better City.  Better Life.”  The Mayor’s rule sticks.  

This couldn’t happen in any European or North American City.  China is the fastest growing country in the world and Shanghai the heart of commercial capitalism, but things are done in a certain Party determined way.  Scary in a sense.  But at the same time as I looked out across the view to the old City, somehow it was all rather magical.  We attended at the right time.

Shanghai.  See it, before they spoil it. 

Jim Steele - it's about how you respond

Jim Steele, Motivational Speaker, Writer and Coach.  

I met up with Jim Steele again last week.  Jim is a brilliant speaker and motivator, having worked with audiences all over the world.  We worked together on several events a few years ago, but nothing for a couple of years.  Jim has a flashy new website here, and I am planning to do two events with him this autumn.  Some of the concepts/motifs he uses are the most memorable I have seen.  Colleagues are usually impressed by the way he gets a barn full of people to perfectly remembers 20 random things forward - and then backwards.  He does it with great panache and humour.  Our favourite here at WYA is the idea of “third boarding” - an analogy he draws from childhood, in swimming pools where you jump terrified off the first board, but the bigger kids do the second and third.  You HAVE to keep moving higher.  The way he tells the story is compelling for audiences, but works best where audiences see themselves in the top cluster of firms, or individuals who aspire to get to the top of their profession.  When someone else is already jumping from the second or first board, it’s not what they do that’s important - it’s how YOU respond.  You could write a book on this stuff....and I am sure Jim has.  

Vivid. WYA's first screenplay, finished.

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The one sheet used to pitch the screenplay in Cannes. Designed by Tony Allen of Big Time Pictures

I finished my first Screenplay this year.  We often use film clips and allusions to stories and storytelling techniques in the sessions we run at work.  One of the best is the clip from the end of Shawshank Redemption where Red talks about “HOPE”.  We used the clip with a leadership group of senior bankers just after Lehman collapsed.  The SR story about a banker who goes to jail for a crime he did not commit... somehow resonated with some of our audience.  Anyway, VIVID is the screenplay.  105 pages.  A killer to write as after wading through Robert McKee, Syd Field, Save the Cat and half a dozen other books on screenwriting there so much of science to the art of telling the story that sometimes form and structure and process take over the joy of simply telling the tale.  Still rules are rules, and no one will read it if the rules are broken.  Which reminded me of some of the feedback we hear from our business leadership teams.  Organisations are human - somehow made unnatural by bureaucracy, process, risk frameworks and procedures manuals.  Sometimes creativity and imagination feel squeezed out completely.  Organisations need to find an outlet for this. Not everyone wants to lock themselves in a bunker for three months and finish a screenplay - but music, comedy, writing, photography, singing, art, drawing, poetry... seldom if ever are things of the workplace.  But often these are the ways people express their souls.  It seems a shame if the soul gets left at the door when we show our security pass in the morning.  I will let you know how we get on with VIVID.  The chances of ANYTHING happening with it are considerably less than ZERO...but you never know.  

Savio Kwan and Alibaba story

I saw Savio after he presented at the Global Leadership Summit at London Business School in June 2010.  Savio is a non-executive director and one of the founders of Alibaba.com.  We invited him to present to a group of 50 of the brightest and best at an event in Shanghai.  I had never been to Shanghai before and all the misconceptions were exactly that.  All the preconceptions, were awry.  The scale, the variety and the imagination of the place is truly astounding.  The conference coincided with the Shanghai Expo - which had about 50 million visitors in 4 months of 2010.  We attended on a quiet day and there were 300,000+ visitors there.  Amazing and incomprehensibly massive in scale.  We scratched only the surface.  We did though get a look at Thomas Heatherwick’s design for the UK pavilion which was worth the trip.  [See our Gallery].  The thing that struck me about Shanghai was that - like London - or in a way, New York - a dirty great big busy river runs right through it.  There is definite sense of the being either side of a City parted by quarter of a mile of dark water.  We went out to Hangzhou to see Alibaba’s headquarters.  13,000 young people work in an internet firm that is less than a decade old and had over 650 million customers (that’s 650,000,000 customers!....) through Alibaba and Taobao.  Savio was there at the beginning with Jack Ma and told the delegates the story of how a small group of friends created something in a room above a flat on the banks of Hangzhou.  It now dominates the “e-Bay” style self trading market across China.  But the thing that struck me and the delegates most was not the tale of setting up an organisation that went from an idea in a small office to the multi-billion turnover organisation, but that the organisation was and is founded on very clear VALUES.  I know many of us work for organisations where the “values” thing is banded around - by the HR manager or posted on the CEO’s intranet site.  Here - and evidenced with our own eyes when we walked through the acres of offices on the Alibaba campus - the VALUES are plastered everywhere.  On every workstation, in corridors, on the walls, in the literature they publish.   The place and the people you meet are imbued with them.  Powerful.  Savio is remarkable, unassuming and eloquent about doing business in China.  That he shares that story, wonderfully communicating a strong sense of values: for people and openness, honesty and the real development of people is great to hear.  Memorable, impactful and at times very very moving indeed.  Hats off.  Wonderful speaker.

Dongcha. 

The greatest single sales pitch ever

Someone recommended this CLIP from MAD MEN to me.  At that point, I'd never watched the series, which is a regret having seen the quality of this.  The pacing, music, images, script all very powerful indeed.  We may well build this into our Storytelling sessions.  There is something intangibly great about this.  

Try reading it, while you listen.

DON DRAPER

Technology is a glittering lure, but there is the rare occasion when the public can be engaged on a level 
beyond flash.If they have a sentimental bond with the
product. 
(beat)
My first job.I was in-house at a fur company.This
old pro copy writer.A Greek named Teddy.And Teddy 
told me the most important idea in advertising is 
"new." It creates an itch.You simply put your product
in there as a kind of calamine lotion.But he also 
talked about a deeper bond with the product.
Nostalgia.It's delicate, but potent.Sweetheart.

Don clicks through the slides.

DON DRAPER

Teddy told me that in Greek, nostalgia literally means,'the pain from an old wound.’It's a twinge in your 
heart, far more powerful than memory alone.This 
device isn't a spaceship, it's a time machine.It goesbackwards and forwards.And it takes us to a place 
where we ache to go again. It's not called 'The Wheel.' It's called 'The Carousel.’It lets us travel the way a child travels.Around and around and back home 
again.To a place where we know we are loved.

Brilliant writing (particularly when you know the sheer audacity of Don's choice of slides).

I am now a Mad Man addict.  Don Draper and the crew from Sterling Cooper Draper Price are etched into the psyche.  Brilliant TV.  They pull off this rare trick where it is so brilliantly realised in production terms (the early 60’s setting is perfectly re-produced) that you forget how amazing it is.  There is also something a little odd, a little unnerving about the whole thing.  Recommended.   Let me know if you get goose-bumps as well.

Blackadder and the art of getting your point across

Black Adder.  Genius.  It doesn’t always travel with international audiences who see it as some perverse/eccentric English thing, or worse, think it is played straight and not for laughs, like some bad period drama.   But everyone likes slapstick and violence.  I saw this clip used on a communications skills workshop.  The point was being made about how forcibly to make the point in communications.  How direct can you be.  Sometimes you have to adopt radical techniques to get your message across.  They showed this clip.  Enjoy.

“A soft hit would have been like this.  Whereas, you hit him like this.” 

SIS becomes Bright Futures

Linked-In, the business focused social networking site is phenomenal.  I took a call from an old friend who suggested we try to get an old alumni site together.  I used to run a national student society called the Student Industrial Society (SIS).   When the old Industrial Society (which was the parent of the SIS) finally gave up the ghost and folded about ten years ago it ended up being led by the left leaning social commentator and writer Will Hutton.  It did though get a great new name - The Work Foundation.  Unfortunately its vibrant student arm, the SIS was hived off to a career advisory library quango in Cambridge called CRAC and became briefly The Skills Society. It is now called something new and to these ears, adopted a mind-numbingly awful name; Bright Futures, though it does have a new entrepreneurial owner Simon Reichwald.   Its such a shame it now sounds like a budget holiday company.  I googled Bright Futures and could not find the organisation which at its height had about 30,000 student members all over the UK and Ireland...I could though find something about toothpaste and dental hygiene.  Anyway, Simon now has the responsibility of building the society and the brand again in a market where the recruitment of graduates is almost certain to get tight again.  Hopefully the values of the SIS organisation from which many people gained so much still hold true.  We will be watching with interest.  Back on Linked-In; we have found 49 former members - mainly from the early 1990’s.  Few are captains of Industry - though very many are consultants, coaches, advisors and mentors to the aforementioned captains.  Again - the market for such consulting services is likely to tighten and the value of contacts, networks and these extended ‘virtual networks’ is likely to become enormous in the next couple of years.  I have been a little slow to jump in their, but since noodling around with Linked in and building some contacts it's fascinating to see how it develops.  Its powerful in one way - easy and intuitive to use.  At the same time I wondered what all these people building virtual networks did with their time before they spent hours on social networking sites.  Inspired, several of our Alumni have suggested we meet up for a beer and find out.  A date has now been fixed for later this month.  The invite is now on Linked in and Facebook...  Lets see how many show up to network in the real world.  I will report back here.  The Alumni site is here:  SIS Alumni.

Dexia. You could not make it up

Dexia image posted here

Costas Markides by the lake

We worked with Costas with a group of investment propeller-head brains who were wrestling with both the lack of sunshine on Lake Annecy [surely one of the most beautiful places on earth?] and a global meltdown.  The conference Chairman delivered the memorable line - “Goldilocks is dead.  We have moved into VILE times”.  VILE is a Volatile, Inflationary, Low Earnings environment.  Oil is $150 a barrel and inflation predicted in just about every economy and market.  Markets are wrestling with the implications of CDO’s being real elements of banks’ balance sheets, not nicely convenient paper off-sheet vehicles.  Somebody has to pay.  Something  has  got to give.  [Editor...oh how awful to be right!?]  

Anyway, Costas is unique.  He is incredible with an international audience.  He is a Professor at LBS (Robert Baumann Chair and all that); he is also from Cyprus, is fast thinking, engaging and extremely, extremely funny.  The upshot of his 90 minute session is that over the years he has worked with a huge variety of blue chip senior executives who hold their annual offsite, who brainstorm, mindmap and plan the year ahead, enjoy the dinner and go back to the office the next week and...NOTHING happens.  Why is this?  Why do ‘high fives’ by a lake in France never turn into concrete actions and changes in behaviour?  Costas unravels some of the less obvious reasons with examples, insights, some interesting group exercises and much good humour.  We may be entering VILE times, but Costas delivered something powerful with the audience in Annecy and prompted something rather better than the normal navel gazing.  At Wave Your Arms, Costas is something of hero.  His philosophy and delivery is perfectly pitched for the smart, sceptical left-brain audience, and we would be happy to tell you more.  You can see a little of Costas here:

Darth Vader and the Head Office canteen

So how do you make Risk interesting?  How do keep an audience awake for three hours plus on Compliance, Operational Risk and the importance of Information Security?  It’s not easy, but we have just returned from Geneva where we ran a programme, part of which needed to drill home the relevance and importance of risk.  During the programme design stage we came up with some analogies for ‘COMMAND and CONTROL’, delegated authority, reporting up and down lines, etc.  Leaders talk a good game on these topics, but the control through fear model continues to be a default trait of too many.  One the team found the following to illustrate the point.  You can be the biggest, most powerful badass in the Universe; but if the staff don’t know who you are, or what you stand for, or what the organisations’ goals are; your chances of having real control over your enterprise are doomed.  Here Darth Vader tries to exercise authority over a member of the canteen staff, with no success whatsoever.  If you’ve seen it before, enjoy again.  If not, Lego and Eddie Izzard create the funniest clip ever posted on Youtube.

Do you know who I am?

Joe Simpson and the skill of the card player

Joe Simpson, Speaker and Inspiration

I bumbed into Joe on the way back from Geneva. We were in the queue for bag check-in at the airport and I had not seen him since March when he had done some work with us in Hong Kong.  He described the audience in Hong Kong as “the scariest I have ever worked with, very intimidating.”  Staggering to hear as at the time he absolutely had 60 very senior people in the palm of his hand.  He spent about 90 minutes with our audience telling the ‘Touching the Void’ story which is mind-boggling well told (even having heard it four times and seen the film).  More impressively he stayed on for Dinner with the senior team in Hong Kong [suitably enough on ‘The Peak’].  Now mountaineers aren’t the chattiest and Joe is no different.  Most of his other vignettes seem to involve about 20% of those people he has been closest to dying, alone, somewhere cold.  Still there is something about this man.  About the way he writes, and talks, or smokes - like he’s still hanging on to something.  His dark, dark eyes haunt.  He is just about the the unfunkiest person you could put with a conference audience at a social event...and it worked.  There is no ego, boasts and few jokes, but he is a remarkable person to spend time with.  He is I understand a bit of a card player back in Ireland where he lives. Maybe this poker player carries those table skills with him always.  His agent rings me occasionally.  We will definitely do some work with Joe again.