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May 28, 2010
Troutbeck, Windermere, Cumbria, England
(from June 18, 2006 post)
We live in a world that never sleeps--and now it combines the ancient with the digital. Technology brings us in and out of the remote and brooding parts of Europe of old standing stones. Not sure I like it--even while it certainly helps me to work.
I left Manchester three days ago to attend the wedding of a London lawyer up here in the Lake District. My hotel for the first night, the Queen’s Head, in Troutbeck, near Windermere, is about 400 years old and looks out over a very narrow winding road, green valleys, daffodils, sheep, cattle, the ruins of old stone houses and hundreds of miles of grey stone fences in the shadows of fells (mountains). All of the fences--and some of the older houses--are done by dry stone.
No mortar at all, and they meander up and down the fells and the valleys and around the lakes for hundreds of miles, like multiple Hadrian's walls stitching everything together. These are the same fences the Lake poets like Wordsworth walked along 200 years ago. Prince Charles has declared dry stone a lost art, and he wants people to re-learn it to keep the fences in repair.
There is no telephone in any room at the Queen’s Head, a rustic inn even around here, in the quiet Troutbeck Valley, not far from the old Roman Road. No internet connections. Just one pay phone near the dining room off the pub, and also a fax, they claim. But it doesn't matter--a Sony Ericsson cell phone and the T-Mobile service allow better wireless connections to talk to clients and my office than I get in the U.S. A Treo or a BlackBerry work just fine here. Clients have no idea where I am unless I tell them.
In a way, it's a shame.
This morning I saw a farmer in one of the rolling fields way down below me in a scene of timeless pastoral beauty and, yes, he had to his ear a silvery cell phone as he paced around between the sheep, their still-nursing lambs and the old stone walls designed to keep them from getting lost or hurt on his neighbor's property. Otherwise, the year was 1730, or earlier.
One great thing if you need to keep working while you travel out here is this: in Europe, I am always at least 5 or 6 hours ahead of North America, which means that I can do "immovable" weekly conferences on ongoing projects in the early afternoon rather than 5:30 to 8:30 AM. I am ahead of the game--that's never true when I am in, say, California. In the western U.S., when I call it a day and go to sleep, workers in the UK, Germany and the rest of Europe are checking their e-mail accounts and just starting their day.
Posted by JD Hull at 08:03 PM | Comments (0)
May 27, 2010
Doris, let's talk. Close the door and pull up a couch.
Insane Clown Laws. In Michigan, the Elliot Larsen Civil Rights Act, Act 453 of 1976, Sec. 209, bans discrimination in employment based on race, color, religion, national origin, age sex, height, weight, or marital status. (Mich. Comp. Laws Ann. 37.2102 (1985 & Supp. 1993).
Posted by Holden Oliver (Kitzbühel Desk) at 11:21 PM | Comments (1)
May 26, 2010
P&G's Alan Lafley: Examine the "meaningful outside".
The Consumer as Boss and Laboratory. For nine years, from 2000 to mid-2009, A.G. Lafley served as chairman of Cincinnati-based Procter & Gamble. Lafley got the CEO job when he got it--in June 2000--in large part because the company was experiencing downturns, and stock price fluctuations, seldom seen in its 163-year history.
During his watch, however, P&G doubled it sales, and grew its line of billion-dollar brands from 10 to 23. Some say the even-keeled and reflective Lafley elevated P&G's "art of the customer" to new levels.
What is brand loyalty? What "moments of truth" lead a housewife, grocery chain, or government buyer to prefer Tide, Pampers, Crest or Pringles over competing brands? Who, exactly, are our customers? Why do they buy from us? When is price not so important?
In May of 2009, and just before he stepped down as CEO, Lafley wrote "What Only the CEO Can Do" in the Harvard Business Review. Here's an excerpt, in which Lafley quotes the consultant-writer Peter Drucker (1909-2005) in comments Drucker made in 2004:
"Inside there are only costs. Results are only on the outside."
The CEO alone experiences the meaningful outside at an enterprise level and is responsible for understanding it, interpreting it, advocating for it, and presenting it so that the company can respond in a way that enables sustainable sales, profit, and total shareholder return growth.
Posted by JD Hull at 10:59 AM | Comments (0)
May 25, 2010
Not a good day so far: The world's stock markets.
Global markets said to "swoon". To blame for today's plunge are Europe's debt crisis, its faltering banks (especially in Spain), way-low oil and metal prices, and an ultra-bold North Korea. Many expect the Dow to dip again below the 10,000 average. See AP, The Sydney Morning Herald and Reuters.
Posted by JD Hull at 11:59 PM | Comments (0)
May 24, 2010
The Senate's over-hyped overhaul.
And is 'shambolic' a real word? See The Economist's take on last week's Senate approval of the financial reform bill in "Almost There". Three excerpts:
The most important component aimed at preventing another crisis is “resolution authority”, under which any big financial company, not just a bank, can be seized and wound down in an orderly way. Lack of such authority led to the shambolic failure of Lehman Brothers and the controversial bail-out of AIG.
The new consumer-protection bureau should help to close the gap between well-regulated banks and poorly regulated mortgage brokers and finance companies, which led the race to the bottom in loan-underwriting standards. But many firms, most significantly small banks, are exempted from its authority.
...Some of banks’ biggest worries remain unresolved. They are resigned to accept some form of the “Volcker rule”, which would restrict their proprietary trading and investment in hedge funds and private equity.
Posted by Holden Oliver (Kitzbühel Desk) at 08:52 PM | Comments (0)