“Little Red Riding Hood has to go!”

Back from a day in Bristol at Familiarity 2009, a conference for family businesses and their advisers. What makes this conference different is that the speakers are prepared to share their stories. So it isn’t just the usual death by Powerpoint. There can be, and there was today, not just a great deal of insight but a lot of emotion.Family businesses have all the problems and issues that other businesses have; likewise the family members have all the problems and issues that other families have. It is just that there is often no separation: things happen in the both business space and the family space at the same time, and often in the same place.

For me, as a professional advising family businesses, and as an outside non-executive director of a family business, there was also a lot on which to reflect. But that is for later; for now, just some of the quotes that stuck in my mind:

From Steve Fudge, MD of Dorset Village Bakery aka Fudges

Little Red Riding Hood has to go!

As Steve explained, this was one of the first things his non-family director said when he arrived. LRRH has some 122 pages, but we all know the outcome, and it can be summed up in four words only – the wolf ate Grandma. So cut the waffle!

From Mandy Nickerson, MD of Bales Worldwide Travel,

We need to recognise our own success

All too often we are ready to recognise this in others, but we rarely look at we have achieved. Mandy also told us that there was not enough fun in business – but there should be. And she talked about how they deal with complaints (disarming customer terrorists).

And from John Tucker, of The International Centre for Families in Business, when talking about advising family businesses on ownership, control and succession

There are two questions you need to ask, and which are often very difficult to answer: who is family? And who isn’t?

Heard it through the Swine Line

The Telegraph is given to hyperbole, and never more so than when knocking the present government (not necessarily something I usually mind). This morning’s lead story about swine flu is another good example.

What caught me eye, though, was this

The hold-up [by the Treasury taking seven months to sign off the deal to set up a flu telephone helpline] meant that the Government had to introduce a stopgap flu phoneline, introduced last week, manned by staff given just one day of training.

In the meantime, NHS Direct, which should have been running the service, has made hundreds of its highly trained staff redundant.

The conclusion the Telegraph invites you to draw is that the Swine Line is somehow sub-standard, operated by barely literate staff and likely to make the situation (sorry, in Telegraph-speak “chaos” or “crisis”: take your pick) much worse.

Well, I have news for you. Expert systems work and this is just flu. The NHS National Pandemic Flu Service is not offering the expert health information and advice that NHS Direct does; instead it is something very different: a screen based expert system that allows people to check their symptoms. It doesn’t need highly trained staff; it simply needs people who can operate the system. Two days in and it is working.

Public service greed

If true, and there is no reason to suppose it is not, even though I read it in the newspapers, the lead story in today’s Telegraph is every bit as good a reason to refuse to pay the licence fee as that advanced by Charles Moore in both the same paper and in his weekly Spectator column. Jonathan Ross may not be everyone’s cup of tea, but he has talent, and people continue to watch and enjoy his show.

A stark contrast to the greedy opportunists who run the BBC.

Taking a long term view

I was at two very different talks last week. The first, Priorities for medical research in the United Kingdom, given at the University of Exeter by Sir Leszek Borysiewicz, the last in their Shaping the Future series. Much of it well over my head, but a fascinating hour and 20 minutes looking at key issues in medical research, now and in the future. One interesting point: Borysiewicz stressed the need for researchers and research institutes to build their relationships with the wealth creation sector.

I came away feeling that this was an area which had been well and truly gripped- and that in the long term, which is what medical research is inevitably about, we are going to be well served.

The second had a rather more immediate subject. This was a valedictory presentation by Peter Gripiaos to the Devon & Cornwall Business Council on The South West – The credit crunch and the real economy. It was a sobering 20 minutes: not very much good news, for any part of the Region, and an interesting counterpoint to the South West RDA’s What Now, its updated plans for 2009 – 2011.

Gripiaos asked ‘So are we out of the woods?’. His view is no (“the signs of recovery are conflicting”) and his answer to ‘So what can be done?’ is just as stark:

We are in the realm of psychology now and the recession needs to run its course.
SWERDA and local authorities have little money and not much leverage.
Many businesses need to fail.
Businesses and consumers need to learn a harsh lesson.
So do politicians.
We should focus on long term strategic interventions rather than short term fire-fighting.

As for the last of those bullet points, that too was the thrust of Borysiewicz’s talk.

It makes for interesting scenario planning.

Are you fed up with the S word?

In the introduction to my last post I touched on the orgy of apology that we have had to endure from MPs, the Speaker, the leaders of the main political parties etc. etc. Yet whether the apology is profound or passing, the overwhelming response of the man and woman in the street (or Harriet Harman’s “court of public opinion”) seems to be anger and resignation. “Sorry” (however expressed) just doesn’t seem to work any more – and the endless repetition has devalued the word to such an extent that before using it in an email to a client this morning (Shock horror! Lawyer says sorry) I wondered if he thought I would be taking the piss.

I went back to a couple of posts by Matthew Taylor in February, where he anatomised apologies: Sorry bankers – a scorecard and Bankers apology – the verdict. Taylor was writing after the appearance of Sir Fred Goodwin and others before the Treasury Select Committee. Read the posts in full: they apply as much to the expenses fiasco as to the contrite (?) bankers.

Perhaps it’s time to take a more systematic approach to apologies. After all, not all ‘sorries’ are worth much. When I worked in Number Ten, Tony Blair used occasionally to admit he’d made a mistake but only when he wished he had listened to himself earlier!

A distinction to start with when grading apologies is between apologising for the act and apologising for the consequences. Insincere apologies will tend to be weak on one or other side; either ‘I’m sorry for what happened but there was nothing I could have done about it’, or ‘I made a mistake but I’m not responsible for what happened as a result’.

I haven’t yet scored the recent apologies (and no doubt someone else will) but the visual representation of the apologies scorecard which Matt Cain produced for Matthew Taylor is very good.