Ideas were at the at the heart of why I started this blog. One of the first posts that I wrote there being a sweet spot in the complexity of products based on the ideas of Dan Greer. I wrote about the first online election fought by Howard Dean, which now looks like a precursor to the Obama and Trump presidential bids.
I articulated a belief I still have in the benefits of USB thumb drives as the Thumb Drive Gospel. The odd rant about IT, a reflection on the power of loose social networks, thoughts on internet freedom – an idea that that I have come back to touch on numerous times over the years as the online environment has changed.
Many of the ideas that I discussed came from books like Kim and Mauborgne’s Blue Ocean Strategy.
I was able to provide an insider perspective on Brad Garlinghouse’s infamous Peanut Butter-gate debacle. It says a lot about the lack of leadership that Garlinghouse didn’t get fired for what was a power play. Garlinghouse has gone on to become CEO of Ripple.
I built on initial thoughts by Stephen Davies on the intersection between online and public relations with a particular focus on definition to try and come up with unifying ideas.
Or why thought leadership is a less useful idea than demonstrating authority of a particular subject.
I touched on various retailing ideas including the massive expansion in private label products with grades of ‘premiumness’.
I’ve also spent a good deal of time thinking about the role of technology to separate us from the hoi polloi. But this was about active choice rather than an algorithmic filter bubble.
Disclosure: work thing. The Feelings was put together by some of my colleagues at McCann for the Laura Hyde Foundation. The Feelings is a film put together to raise awareness of the serious difficulties that frontline workers face, and how this can affect them on an ongoing basis, particularly if they don’t seek support. Each of the characters represents some of the feelings that workers can be holding down in an effort to meet expectations of outward stoicism, appear professional or just hold it together. This can include feelings of ‘rising dread’, ‘red rage’, and ‘powerless’.
You can find out more about the mental health impact on our frontline workers here. World Mental Health day was Monday morning and as a business we’ve been looking at agency member health on an ongoing basis.
Malaysian independence
Tunku Abdul Rahman was a Malaysian statesman and lawyer who served as the first prime minister of Malaysia and the head of government of its predecessor states from 1955 to 1970. Tunku is a royal title which gives an idea of the respect that he is held. He was the first chief minister of the Federation of Malaya from 1955 to 1957. He supervised the independence process that culminated on 31 August 1957. As Malaya’s first prime minister he dominated politics there for the next 13 years. In 1963, he successfully incorporated the Federation of Malaya, Sabah, Sarawak, and Singapore into the state of Malaysia. However, tensions between the Malay and Chinese communities resulted in Singapore’s expulsion in 1965. His performance during race riots in Kuala Lumpur in 1969 led to his resignation the following year.
Discrimination
This opened the door a succession of economic policies that favoured Malays at the expense of ethnic Indians and Chinese Malaysians The New Economic Policy was put in place for 20 years. It was replaced by National Development Policy in 1990 and the National Vision Policy (NVP) in 2001. But all of this was to happen in the future. At the time of independence Tunku Abdul Rahman was a hero for all communities and his speeches unified rather than divided the different communities of the Malaya Federation. Cadburys put this advert together to celebrate Malaya independence and capture the memories of someone who saw Rahman speak.
The global landscape for artificial intelligence
INFER did an interesting talk that showcased which countries are punching above their weight in development around machine learning. You’d be surprised by many of the results.
Pui Yuet
Pui yuet nannies bring traditional techniques for well-heeled Hong Kong new mothers. It brings a mix of common sense, traditional Chinese medicine and folklore together to get mother and baby off to the best start.
Singaporean OnlyFans creatives
Our Grandfather Story have done some fantastic interviews with OnlyFans creatives who tell their stories. Its complicated, heart-breaking and empowering in turns.
I wasn’t aware of Honey Badger Cummins until a couple of days ago. Cummins was a former professional rugby union player who managed to parley his career into work on television and a professional social media following. Nick Honey Badger Cummins had played 15 times for his country, including the international rugby sevens competition and for top flight clubs in Australia and Japan.
Following his retirement as a professional sportsman, he had appeared in a number of reality television show and gained a following as a travel influencer on social media. His travel influencer status, personality profile in Australia and former rugby sevens career were obvious points of interest for the Hong Kong Tourist Board.
Propaganda
The problem for Honey Badger Cummins is that he’s at the centre of Hong Kong’s campaign to remake its international image. This is after its COVID-19 isolation, 2019 protests with brutal policing actions, the national security law mass imprisonment, crushed media | civil society sectors and the large amount of Hong Kongers who have gone into exile. It isn’t perceived as a ‘straight tourism’ brief, but instead part of a white-washing exercise.
https://youtu.be/rWhrrbUj9Ws
The comments on this video are universally negative in nature at the time of writing this post.
Restaurants and other venues portrayed in the videos have closed down and Cummins flouts what would be now current masking regulations and QRcode health app tracking. This is due to the footage having been shot at the beginning of 2020. Even that timing shows a lack of good judgement by Honey Badger Cummins. But Cummins isn’t the only party to blame.
Poor judgement by Always Human
The Australian creative agency Always Human; which created the videos being used, should be ashamed of themselves in terms of their ethical stance. The content was originally shot in January 2020, when the brutal police crackdown was still fresh in the minds of the general public around the world. Its not a good look for the other agency clients like Asics, GoPro, HP, Nike, Oakley, Under Armour and Volkswagen to be associated with the agency.
Virgin Atlantic pulls out of Hong Kong after 30 years | Telegraph – Virgin Atlantic is pulling out of Hong Kong, scrapping flights and shutting its offices as strict Covid restrictions batter the island’s status as a global financial hub. Ending three decades of flying to Hong Kong, Sir Richard Branson’s airline blamed the closure of Russian airspace as well as the declining profitability of the route. American Airlines and Virgin Australia have also backed away from Hong Kong. I could see other airlines from Europe backing away from Hong Kong due to the disadvantage that Russian airspace provides to them versus Cathay Pacific
Luxury Daily | “A small, concrete happiness”: Why luxury brands in China love cafés – Facing weakening consumer demand, luxury brands are building experiential cafés across China to pursue new consumer touch points and growth areas – it reminds me of the ‘Revlon effect’. During recessions consumers who can’t afford big luxuries like small luxuries like a lipstick or a chocolate bar
Hallyu The Korean Wave is exhibition at the Victoria and Albert Museum. Hallyu is actually a contraction of Han ryu which literally means The Korean Wave. Han meaning Korean (so the Korean written language is called Hangul) and ryu meaning wave.
Forgotten War
The exhibition was interesting from a London audience perspective. You have to be a real history buff to know that the Korean war even happened. The olympics put Korea temporarily in western consciousness and then it submerged again. It was only since I started writing this blog that The Korean Wave started to become part of the London zeitgeist, let alone the rest of the country.
Hallyu now
K-pop group Black Pink is now number one in the UK album charts with their sophomore release and there will be at least one Korean option when you open Uber Eats. Korean films and series (usually the most transgressive ones) are popular on Netflix and in arthouse cinemas.
Korean reality
The reality of The Korean Wave is more complex. It was something that was over 50 years in the making, going back at least to the compact that Park Chung-hee made with Korean business leaders at the expense of economic inequality, human rights and labour rights. The Korean Wave was birthed by a traumatic history of authoritarian rule. The Korean Wave wouldn’t have been possible without the economic growth driven by rapid economic growth and industrialisation. This in turn created the flywheel effect as Jim Collins would put it, that helped Korea become a cultural powerhouse as well as an economic one.
The exhibition skims the surface of this complexity, but is stylish and entertaining in nature.
The exhibition is running until February next year.
Expats Shun China Over Covid Policies, Forcing Foreign Firms to Scale Back – WSJ – “companies are even questioning whether it is responsible for them to deploy foreign staff to China when the numerous restrictions mean they are unable to guarantee a basic duty of care for them and their families,” the European business lobby in China said Wednesday in its annual report on the state of business in the country. Many of the chamber’s member companies, multinationals with a longstanding presence in the country, are downsizing, localizing and hiving off their operations in China as the number of Europeans and Britons living there roughly halved from prepandemic levels to around 60,000 in recent months, according to the chamber’s estimate. – the expat infrastructure of schools, services and food built up over decades is withering as foreigners leave. And that is probably seen as a good thing by Xi Jingping, who is looking to de-westernise China
Design
So much in this video about quality, design, sustainability, carbon footprint and the fallacies supporting electric vehicles.
Japan’s biggest K-pop fans might just be senior citizens, survey shows | SoraNews24 -Japan News – Online marketplace service Mercari studied the purchasing habits of its users between September 1 2021 and August 31 2022 to find out what products are most popular for each generation. They discovered that users who reported to be over 50 years old more frequently bought K-pop merchandise than even Gen Z.Despite competing with other popular products like character merchandise, domestic idol goods, and video games, K-pop items were a big seller among every age group. It was the third-most-purchased category for teens and the second for people in their 30s, but as it turns out, it was the most purchased category for people in their fifties and seventies! – this probably tells you a lot about how ageing is changing, not only in Japan, but elsewhere
Tinder just opened a convenience store in Japan, aimed at adults only | SoraNews24 -Japan News – Japanese convenience stores are a much-loved part of everyday life in Japan, where you can get pretty much everything your heart desires at any time of the day or night. Last weekend, however, a new convenience store popped up in Tokyo’s Shibuya district offering something that others don’t usually have in-store: love and romance. Called SwipeMart, the convenience store was run by dating app Tinder, and though it was only open from 16-19 September, it was such a resounding success there are hopes the pop-up will pop up at more locations in the future. Aimed at the over-18 crowd, the convenience store had some great freebies on offer for Tinder members, ranging from a choice of either jocks, socks, or a long-sleeve T-shirt
Sensitivities Rise As Geopolitics Takes Toll On Global Communicators – Richard Edelman penned a blogpost that questioned whether “truth will win out”, amid considerable state-sponsored disinformation activity. Edelman was referring specifically to the Russia/Ukraine conflict, but his column included reference to China’s efforts to influence public opinion. Edelman China blogpost 2022 By the end of the week, that paragraph — which was sourced directly from this WSJ article — had been excised from the post.
EU to consult on making Big Tech contribute to telco network costs | Euronews – The European Union’s executive body will launch a consultation early next year on whether tech giants should bear some of the costs of Europe’s telecoms network, EU industry chief Thierry Breton said on Friday. Europe’s telecoms operators have long lobbied for a financial contribution from U.S. tech firm’s such as Alphabet’s Google, Meta’s Facebook and Netflix, saying that they use a huge part of the internet traffic
Vetoing Victory – Israel Is Blocking (Military) Aid To Ukraine – Oryx – Israel’s refusal to provide military aid to Ukraine or even permission for other countries to do so sharply contradicts historical aid to Israel, when much of the Western world rallied behind the country when it faced invasions of its own, launching air bridges to keep it supplied, and engaging in blood donation campaigns for Israeli soldiers. Of course, the time that Israel could count on such strong support and sympathy from the Western public is long gone, and the world is unlikely to forget Israel’s inaction and deliberate obstruction of support to Ukraine
Jim Collins, the author of Good To Great has been researching and writing about what makes companies successful since 1988, though there are points made about this and the similarity of the work done by Tom Peters at McKinsey. Peters eventually turned the outputs of that research into the book In Search of Excellence.
From this research Collins has written a series of books:
Good to Great was Collins’ sophomore book published in 2001. I was curious to see how it stands up in the 20 years since publication.
What’s the book like?
Collins has written a surprisingly accessible book that at the same time demonstrates an academic rigour to the underlying research. A good chunk of the book is an epilogue, frequently asked questions and referenceable materials at the back.
Each chapter is comes with a summary page and Collins makes good use of visuals to convey his ideas.
Synopsis
Collins bases Good to Great around seven ideas.
‘Level 5’ leadership. Collins had a management maturity capability model, the top level on ‘level 5’ was a leader who left their ego at the door with personal humility but professional will. They tend to be work horse rather than race horses. I found this particularly interesting as research that my first agency used to tout showed how a CEO’s visibility or fame had a positive correlation with rising share price, indicating that investors are probably buying on the wrong signals
Getting the right people on the bus. The right people comes before vision, strategy, tactics, structure. ‘Who’ before ‘what’. Rigor but not ruthlessness drives people decisions. All of this was based around three principles: 1/ If in doubt, don’t hire. Instead keep searching. 2/ Act when a people change is needed. 3/ Put the best people on the best opportunities. The right people thrive in a culture of vigorous debate in search of the best answers and then stand united behind the collective decisions, regardless of political or personal interests. The right people are your most important asset. You need self motivating people rather than having to work to motivate them
The Stockdale Paradox. Retain faith that you will succeed in the end. Regardless of the difficulties. And at the same time confront the most brutal facts of your current reality. Whatever they might be. An honest determined effort is required to find the truth of a situation. 1/ Leading with questions, not answers. 2/ Engage in a dialogue and debate, not coercion. 3/ Conduct autopsies, not blame. 4/ Build ‘red flag’ mechanisms that turn information into something that cannot be ignored. Dealing with problems head on. Leadership doesn’t begin with vision, it starts with confronting facts head on and dealing with their implications
The ‘hedgehog concept’. Focus at the interception point between: 1/ What you are deeply passionate about. 2/ What you can be the best in the world at. 3/ What drives your economic engine. It is an iterative process. This becomes the one big thing that you focus on.
A culture of self-discipline. Great results over the long term depends on a disciplined culture. It requires people who adhere to a consistent system, but also gives freedom and responsibility within the framework of the system. Discipline means focus, ignoring once in a lifetime opportunities that dont fit within the business focus. Stop doing lists are as important than to do lists. This reminds me of why Apple never put an FM radio in an iPod or iPhone.
Technology as accelerator. Technology isn’t a fad that they follow, but apply carefully selected technologies that meat their focus. A classic example of getting this wrong is the way Micro Focus pivoted to cryptocurrency and ended up being bought by rival Open Text. Instead the attitude to technology is down to thoughtfulness and creativity. Contrary to every marketing campaign I did during my first decade in agency life, technology by itself is never a primary cause of greatness (or decline).
Good practices are cumulative and compounded in nature. Collins talks about the flywheel effect, the momentum energy required to get it moving requires consistent pressure, but once it gets moving subsequent pressure means that it moves the flywheel at a much faster rate
Where Good To Great didn’t age well
The example of Wells Fargo standing out as an exemplar jarred with me. Wells Fargo is cited as a prime example of a great company, but there are examples of a number of cracks in its culture over years
Allegations of higher costs charged to African-American and Hispanic borrowers on sub-prime loans which resulted in fines and damages paid totalling 175 million dollars
Good to Great focuses on American companies, there doesn’t seem to be a consideration of how national culture may have an impact on the firm. Where does China’s wolf culture or Samsung’s punishing culture fit in the kind of model that Collin’s proposes in his book? I don’t know the answer but its a topic worth exploring in a more global business environment. I think that its particularly interesting because Collins’ work has been widely read by Chinese business people, yet their ‘great companies’ look very different to the corporates that Collins cites as good to great in nature.
In conclusion
Collins has created useful management book for departments as well as large corporates, which explains why it has been published in so many languages including Spanish and Chinese. What is less apparent in Chinese corporate culture is how influential the book has really been.
You can find my updated list of professional reading materials here and further book reviews here. Lastly, more on Good to Greathere.
Riding The Wave Into China’s Latest Hype — Land Surfing | Jing Daily – land surfing is what a lot of people would know as a long board in skating. I first came across them 20 years ago, when I used to know a dreadlocked German photographer who got around London on one. South Korean app developer Ko Hyojoo, brought style and strong Instagram game to long boarding. From her style cutting and spinning on her board, I can see where land surfing came from. She has collaborated with a lot of fashion brands, getting an international profile with her land surfing.
Films like this one from Vogue in 2016 blew long boarding / land surfing up across Asia. I have former colleagues from Hong Kong who took up land surfing in the winter as they missed the feeling of water-skiing which they did some summer weekends.
It was only a matter of time before China’s Taobao culture picked up on the idea of land surfing.
The Professional Try-Hard Is Dead, But You Still Need to Return to the Office | Vanity Fair – It’s Malcolm Gladwell waxing emotional about how much he loves return-to-office and pleading, “Don’t you want to feel part of something?” as if the man has never heard of, like, recreational softball. It’s Mark Zuckerberg reportedly getting mad about an employee asking if Meta Days (extra vacation days introduced during the pandemic) are still on this year because, shouldn’t the pleasure of working for Meta be enough? It’s any number of investor-type herbs who’ve been warning about how quiet quitting will cause you to lose out on x dollar amount of earnings later in life
Pro-China media slam ‘minority’ of Hong Kong mourners in wake of Queen’s death — Radio Free Asia – Hong Kong historian Hans Yeung, who now lives in the U.K., said Hong Kongers’ nostalgia for colonial times was a complex emotion. “The reason we are seeing these mourning activities is that the current way of governing is different from the way it was in Hong Kong more than 20 years ago, and the emotions that result from that difference between the old and the new,” Yeung told RFA. “It’s not necessarily the idea that we miss colonial times because things were so good back then, but because the current government is so poor,” he said. Yeung said some mourners were too young to remember an era in which the Queen’s portrait was in every classroom, and TV stations shut down every night with “God Save the Queen.” He said younger people likely have read about Hong Kong before the 1997 handover to Chinese rule, and drawn their own conclusions
Ideas
Simple models predict behavior at least as well as behavioral scientists – we analyzed data from five studies in which 640 professional behavioral scientists predicted the results of one or more behavioral science experiments. We compared the behavioral scientists’ predictions to random chance, linear models, and simple heuristics like “be- havioral interventions have no effect” and “all published psychology research is false.” We find that behavioral scientists are consistently no better than – and often worse than – these simple heuristics and models. Behavioral scientists’ predictions are not only noisy but also biased. They systematically overestimate how well behavioral sci- ence “works”: overestimating the effectiveness of behavioral interventions, the impact of psychological phenomena like time discounting
How China Has Added to Its Influence Over the iPhone – The New York Times – More than ever, Apple’s Chinese employees and suppliers contributed complex work and sophisticated components for the 15th year of its marquee device, including aspects of manufacturing design, speakers and batteries, according to four people familiar with the new operations and analysts. As a result, the iPhone has gone from being a product that is designed in California and made in China to one that is a creation of both countries. The critical work provided by China reflects the country’s advancements over the past decade and a new level of involvement for Chinese engineers in the development of iPhones. After the country lured companies to its factories with legions of low-priced workers and unrivaled production capacity, its engineers and suppliers have moved up the supply chain to claim a bigger slice of the money that U.S. companies spend to create high-tech gadgets. The increased responsibilities that China has assumed for the iPhone could challenge Apple’s efforts to decrease its dependency on the country, a goal that has taken on increased urgency amid rising geopolitical tensions over Taiwan and simmering concerns in Washington about China’s ascent as a technology competitor.
