business

Cross-pollination

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Some of you will know that as well as the day job and this blog, I also run a site called British business bloggers. I won’t bang on about the site here, you can find more information about it here.

(Note to self: there were too many “heres” in that last sentence!)

Anyway, long story short and all that, the site is run by bloggers for bloggers and looks to share content and blog traffic.

(Note to self: don’t say that you aren’t going to bang on about a subject and then bang on about it!)

So why talk about it now? Well two reasons really, I know there are people who read this site that maybe don’t read the other site and it would be good to raise it to their attention. And secondly, because we’re running a very cool competition at the moment!

Basically, we want to give away 4 sets of 100 business cards courtesy of the lovely people at moo.com. Yep, give them away. Because we’re good like that. All you need to do is to make us laugh….intentionally mind you! You can see more details on the competition here where you can also enter. How simple is that?

Go on…..I dare you. You know you want to…..

PS. Please enter here not HERE. OK…..I know…..I did it again.

 

Creating growth

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My friend Rick over at Flip Chart Fairytales wrote a post recently bemoaning (or at least questioning) the lack of creativity in business. Pulling together a number of commentators he makes, as you’d expect, some great points and the comments are equally as good. But, I read the post with a certain sense of despair.

“Creativity has always been a long hard slog, slowed down by corporate obstacles, spiked by saboteurs and smothered by indifference. But I’m not sure this is any worse now than it has ever been.”

So why the despair?

First is the sadly common mistake of mixing the terms innovation, entrepreneurialism and creativity. I’d argue these are very different skills and very different mindsets.

There is a pervasive “old world” business approach and mindset to the blog. A lot of the comments refer to creativity taking place in small start-ups that are later bought by the corporate giants and therefore the lack of creativity in those corporations, and hence a passive outsourcing of thinking.

I’ll come back to that point later.

However, most depressing is a focus on a very limited segment of the economy. And here it brings me great pleasure to introduce to you, the creative industries. That’s right, there are business out there that have as their core, as their raison d’etre, a creative purpose. Film making, gaming, television, design and yes….publishing, to name but a few. We, in Britain, are incredibly lucky to have a ridiculously healthy creative industry. And it isn’t small, the creative industries in their entirety are as big, if not bigger, than the financial services sector. We have the biggest creative industry in Europe and, pound for pound, probably the world.

More so, this is an industry that is growing and growing, despite the current economic climate.

Is there a lack of creativity in UK plc? No. Really, no.

Rick and those that commented are talking about one or two specific sectors of the economy, they are confusing entrepreneurial flair and innovation with genuine creativity. The UK economy is thriving with creativity, but it is lacking the focus and investment that other, less profitable and, dare I say it, less future proof industries receive. If Government is serious about growth then it could do far worse than focus on the creative industries as the keystone of recovery.

Now, to come back to the point about passive outsourcing. Business is changing, the face and structure of business is in an evolutionary stage. Small businesses, sole traders, bedroom ventures are all bursting with innovation and entrepreneurial endeavour. Many of them are niche, many of them don’t grow, many of them don’t want to grow and ultimately some of them do sell out to corporate monoliths, before then going on to their next endeavour. Is there anything wrong with that? I honestly don’t think so. That is at the heart of entrepreneurialism.

So, to answer Rick’s question, “Is there a creativity crisis?” No. Are our established corporations designed for entrepreneurial flair and innovation? Also no.

But the two questions are not the same.

Our creative industries are thriving, they are full of truly creative people, not bureaucrats, working to make world-class products and develop leading edge content. They may be quiet, they may sometimes be unseen, but they are an economic force to be reckoned with.

Overlook them at your peril.

Lies, damned lies and business

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Business is full of lies. FACT.

Sometimes the lies are big, sometimes the lies are small. Sometimes the lies are inconsequential and sometimes they rock the foundations of the civilised world. But like the urban myth that you’re never more than 8 foot from a rat, in business you’re never more than one cubicle away from a lie.

And that is just the way that it is.

I’m not going to try to argue that the Nick Leeson, the Olympus Corporation, Lehman Brothers or Jérôme Kerviel lies are in any way appropriate or defendable.

But the only difference between these and the others is the size and the consequences, those that make a moral judgment would be better off looking closer to home.

Is it a coincidence that so many public limited companies come in within their stated profit targets every year? Good management or good financial management? Over perform and you run the risk of raising expectations for future years, underperform and you run the risk of your share price being devalued and your tenure being reduced.

If you release provision in a bad year to bolster the bottom line, or take bad news in a good year to managed down profits, are these really lies? Well yes, in the truest sense of the word they are. But they are universally accepted and ignored.

And in the same way how many companies that state “people are their greatest asset” would stand up at the AGM and announce,

“Profits? Shareholder return? Pah…..we’ve got great people….we rock!”

Business is full of lies.

Anyone who has ever answered the question, “Which dress do you prefer?” with a, “they both look great, but I prefer that one because it matches your eyes, not because there is anything wrong with the other one which is perfectly lovely and looks great on you in every single way…..” (you can tell I’ve practised that).  Can easily transfer this to, “you performed really well and we really enjoyed meeting you, unfortunately we need to make a decision and there were candidates who better matched the criteria for the role”.

Likewise the “bijou property with unusual features and scope for improvement” can easily become, “we are committed to the development of all our employees and helping them fulfil their career potential”.

The language of business is a weasel mix of truth and lies, correct. But it isn’t any different from any other part of society. Politicians, Teachers, Doctors, Sportspeople, Charities, Husbands, Wives, Children.  Let he is who without sin etc. etc.

It is very easy for the press, for the public, for the politicians to highlight individual failings and to find a helpful scapegoat.  Business shouldn’t be held to any higher moral standard than we would hold anyone else. We shouldn’t confuse profit-making with profiteering, we shouldn’t engage in duality or assertions of duplicity. We should be open and honest about our imperfections and the societal need for conformity and complicity.

Lies are an everyday part of our lives and in covering over this fact we are of course reasserting its veracity; an inconvenient, but inescapable truth. Just like any other context, business needs lies to survive, it needs lies to maintain balance and it needs lies to underpin its existence. But like in our social lives, like in sport, like in the church, sometimes a lie becomes so big, so grave that it causes damage, hurt and concern. The fact that in business they are reported more sensationally, doesn’t mean that they are more prevalent or indeed any worse.

Business is full of lies. Guilty as charged. But lets face it, it isn’t in the dock all alone.

Create value

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If you had to rank the professions on their level of creativity, where would you rank the HR profession? Probably somewhere on the continuum between accounting and marketing, probably closer to the former and further from the latter.  Creativity doesn’t figure highly in any core competencies I have ever seen and the nearest that we get is the more “business acceptable” innovation.  Somehow creativity feels soft, it raises images of artists and writers and nebulous concepts, whereas we of course want to look hard and mean and commercial and worthy of the much vaunted “seat at the top table”.

Of course, we deal in a world full of commercial imperatives that cannot be denied.  Most of us work in businesses that either need to make a profit, balance the books, or make savings regardless of the sector.  The question is not the what, but the how and creativity is a much undervalued tool in the drive for commercial solutions.  We need an answer, we look to past experience, to other businesses and to the HR press seldom do we look at our business, look inside ourselves and search for a new or different way. A way that is bespoke to our business and provides a competitive edge.

I’d suggest the first step any HR professional should ever take in considering a solution is to ask what the real problem is and only then to consider whether a solution is actually required and why? What value will it add? Is this driven by business need or by some other force.  What is the least intervention that would solve the problem and how does it fit culturally with the way that the business behaves?

Creativity requires you to be brave. It requires confidence and self belief and a willingness to plot a unique course.  But it also requires a closeness and in-depth understanding of your business and a desire to make a difference. Being creative isn’t the antithesis of being commercial. It is the start.