Month: June 2010

Never say what you really think

I got pulled over by the rossers on the way home tonight. It was just after 11pm, traffic was light, and was caught skipping a red light on my bicycle.

I’m not after sympathy. I know I won’t get any because motorists (me included) get really cheesed off by the frequent sight of lycra-clad urban cycle terrorists violating virtually every conceivable traffic law on a daily basis (me included).

First then, I apologise for breaking the law. I know that cyclists are subject to the laws of the road just as much as drivers.  That said, I think I was not acting in an unreasonable way taking into account the full circumstances.

The red light in question controls a junction on Kingston Hill that only feeds the car park to Asda. Asda closed at 9pm. There were no pedestrians anywhere to be seen. There were two buses stopped at the lights, taking up both lanes, and rather than edge inside them, which, as every cyclist knows is very dangerous, I edged around them on the outside lane.

I’m on a bike. I have great all-round vision unlike a driver. I can hear everything around me, unlike a driver. I ride this route very regularly and have an acute awareness of the traffic light phasing. It was 11pm at night and traffic was light.

I was not moving much faster than walking speed as I reached front row of the grid and I could see there was no traffic or pedestrians coming out of Asda. Instead of coming to a complete stop and having to unhook those bloody stupid clippy shoes from the pedals I edged out across the junction and slowly kept moving forward.

Before I had cleared the junction the lights were green. I rose up off my saddle and pushed on quickly Lance Armstrong style, and after maybe 20 yards became aware of a marked police car pull up alongside me, blue lights flashing, sounding its horn. I always thought horns were only to be used as a warning, not as a way to grab one’s attention unnecessarily.

I pulled up – as it happens right in front of the next set of traffic lights which had just turned green. The police car stopped next to me, and between the two of us we were now blocking both southbound lanes, at a major intersection, with a trail of cars behind us now prevented from continuing up the road.

Officer: “You have just committed a moving traffic offence for which I can fine you £30”

Me: “You’re right and I’m sorry, but it is 11pm, Asda closed a few hours ago, I could see my passage was clear, I knew the lights were just about to change and I was travelling at walking speed” (I actually wanted to say “you are blocking the road because you can’t be arsed to pull over and get out of the car to speak to me properly – that is unnecessary obstruction of the highway, rude and pretty unprofessional” but having been a police office for 15 years in a previous life I knew better than to say want I really thought).

Officer: “If I have to stop, so do you”

Me: “I understand that and I’m sorry for wasting your time” (I actually wanted to say “If I have to stop, so do you is a pretty childish way of describing the situation surrounding my transgression. Grow up and go and do some proper police work and stop wasting everybody’s time”, but having been a police office for 15 years in a previous life I knew better than to say want I really thought).

I think I’ll get the train tomorrow just in case Kingston Old Bill read this, get the hump and come looking for me.

Ghost blogging

I guess I probably still qualify as social media virgin. Lots of frantic petting as I try to make up for lost time, but the truth is I’ve only been blogging for 5 months, active on Twitter for just over a year and still cannot really be arsed with Facebook.

Like all virgins, I am therefore somewhat by definition a touch naive. I like to believe that when I follow someone on Twitter or subscribe to a blog, I get to connect with the actual individual I’m interested in.

For example, I enjoy following Duncan Bannatyne on Twitter. I have enjoyed reading his books; he has a very interesting life story, which in many respects he lives out on Twitter, and I enjoy the opportunity to feel part of it. Now if I ever had an inkling that he was not responsible for his own tweets and that he employed a ghost writer or even shared the job out with his PA, I’d be off like a shot.

I’d feel cheated. It’s as bad as a doting fan paying big bucks to watch a mega recording artist perform live, only to discover half way through the show she was lip-synching. It’s probably as bad as removing ones wedding ring before entering a singles bar….

I only found out recently that there is a massive ongoing debate on this very issue. It’s been raging for years.

In the red corner you have the PRs, the seasoned command & control communications veterans and the ghost bloggers themselves. These guys think ghost blogging is an honourable and essential profession, given that their clients are far too busy and important to actually write for themselves.

And if they didn’t do it for them the world would be an emptier place because we’d all be missing out from their nuggets of wisdom, and sparkling wit & repartee.

Of course their clients don’t like them to disclose who they write for – that would be embarrassing right? That could lead to reputational damage right? So it’s OK to do it provided no one finds out. Oh dear. So where is the integrity and honesty in that?

So the red corner argues that professional communicators have always supported CEOs, celebrities and politicians by writing their speeches, their books and their letters since time immemorial. It’s true, and I have no issue with that. But these media are not social. They are not blogs; which have fundamentally changed the rule book.

Needless to say, I am in the blue corner. If I want to read facts about a company, I will read its annual report and check out its website. If I want to understand what makes a company tick I’ll subscribe to its employee blogs and follow its staff on Twitter, where I can connect with them directly. And part of what makes the experience so interesting and the connection so compelling is the blend of work and play; the immediacy; the shared pleasure in sharing; and the free-flow of consciousness.

Actually this blog post was triggered off by a comment I read a few days ago in a piece on www.ragan.com called It’s just ridiculous to argue about ghost-blogging

Try the link, it may work for you. I cannot access it now unless I pay a rather chunky subscription fee.

An anonymous contributor added this in a comment in his or her anonymous defence of ghost blogging (spot the irony): “a highly polished, marcom speak-laden entry, is highly preferable to undisciplined, poorly constructed, rambling from a great CEO who is not a writer”.

I’m sorry I don’t buy this. I don’t read blogs to be entertained by brilliant writing. I read blogs because I am interested in listening to that person. I want to feel connected to the author. I can’t do either if I know the blog is ghost written. If you don’t have time to blog, don’t do it. That’s fine. I won’t think any less of you! But if you are going to blog, be genuine and be real.

I like the advice that Kodak give on the subjectin their Kodak Social Media Tips: “Always be transparent. When you are communicating in social media say who you are and who you work for. Don’t try to be sneaky and plant comments, don’t hire people to go out and say nice things about you and stay away from ghost writing. Be genuine and be real.”

I’m going to leave the last word to an old pro who knows what he is talking about. If I’m a social media virgin, I guess Robert Scoble, is the Casanova. In his 2003 blogging manifesto he wrote: “Use a human voice. Don’t get corporate lawyers and PR professionals to cleanse your speech. We can tell, believe me.”  Scobleizer – The corporate weblog manifesto

Wise words indeed from the undisputed heavyweight champion of the blogging world!

Celebrate good times

I love celebrations. Last week we celebrated the company’s 10th birthday with cake, champagne and jelly beans at all of our offices in the UK and abroad. It was a real joy to see happy smiling faces everywhere as we celebrated a decade of incredible achievement. On 9 June 2000, Betfair ran its first market on the Oaks at Epsom, where £3,462 was traded between 36 customers, watched over by just a handful of staff. Ten years later the company employs over 2,000 people spread across 30 locations around the world, and deals with more daily transactions than every European stock exchange put together.

And for the next month we are celebrating the most amazing festival in the sporting calendar. We are at our core a sports betting company, so the World Cup is a big thing for us, and we have been preparing for it for years. It’s only fitting therefore that we have a bit of fun and pay homage to the 32 teams battling it out in South Africa.

While the media are banging on about the cost to employers of World Cup distraction as staff absenteeism and lack of attention rises incrementally in line with England’s success on the pitch, and companies ban access to footy websites and make the flying of the Cross of St George a disciplinary offence, we have been encouraged to fly the flag – and more.

Our offices have become a sea of colour, creativity and noise to reflect the energy, excitement and diversity of the World Cup. Our staff in London have self organised themselves into 34 teams and given their bits of the office a bit of a makeover. There are 34 teams because two non-qualifiers that narrowly missed out on a trip to South Africa, Ireland and Egypt wanted to get involved.

My team is representing the Cameroon. Which is great, because the Cameroon have a rich heritage when it comes to World Cup celebrations!

Don’t be fooled into thinking we are all just on one great big World Cup jolly. Au contraire, this is going to be a very busy month for everyone as we mobilise to meet the demands of dramatically increased customer activity.

However, I work for a company that recognises the importance of celebration as well as the value of having a bit of fun while your nosed is pressed firmly against the grindstone.

Don’t just sit there feeling hard done by – check out our current vacancies and get involved!

Profits, passion & purpose

Delivering Happiness officially hit the streets today – although it kind of feels like it has been out there and read by millions of us already. It deserves to be a major success if for no other reason than the extraordinary way in which it has been marketed over the last few months. It will be a best seller because never before has an author put so much heart and soul into launching a book.

I suspect it cost a few bob as well, but how much better to spend your marketing budget on delighting a legion of existing fans and admirers and leveraging their already enthusiastic advocacy, which has already resulted in 40 reviews on Amazon, 32 hits on Google News just today, and attracted pieces in the Wall Street Journal, New York Times, and CBS News.

So what is all the fuss about? Read the book and certainly in the early stages you encounter a pretty ordinary guy. If anything, an under achiever. A flighty, fidgety sort who seemed to lack focus and drive. As a teenager and young adult, he was far from being a model student and a worthy employee. To put it bluntly, his low boredom threshold and inventive ways to avoid doing work did little to point to the fact that he would become a multi-millionaire by his early twenties.

That should be pretty inspirational stuff for thousands of listless teenagers out there who think life is sooooooo unfair.

Like many successful entrepreneurs, Tony Hsieh was far more interested in finding ways to make money than to focus solely on his studies. He was making $200 a week from a mail order business making buttons at High School. And while his parents thought he was diligently practicing his violin for an hour every day, he was reading ‘Boy’s Life’ magazine behind his bedroom door whilst the rest of the house listened to a pre-recorded loop of him scratching away at the fiddle.

At Harvard he did as little academic work as possible, spending a lot more of his study time in bed than I ever did at Uni, and instead of working nights for one week every term at the local bakery to like I did to make ends meet, Hsieh was making considerably more from his late night fast food operation selling burgers and pizzas to his peers.

Somehow he graduated with a degree and got a very well paid job with Oracle. That did not last long as he found it tedious and unchallenging. His subsequent stint as a self employed web designer went much the same way.

All the time, Hseih was learning the importance of doing something you were excited by. So much so that a few years later when he sold his Link Exchange to Microsoft for a mere $265m, with a personal fortune of $41m, Hseih gave $8m back because he didn’t have the patience to wear his golden handcuffs for another few months. He had worked out that for him, following his passion was more rewarding that chasing the buck.

And then came Zappos. Having read the book I can see that Tony Hseih’s passion had very little to do with selling shoes. Online or offline. No – his passion is for driving human (and therefore corporate) performance through amazing customer service. It could have been furniture, whoopee cushions, griddle pans or fishing tackle. It just happened to be shoes. Aided by the inspiration of some people he met along the way.

What drives this man is the pursuit of happiness and the recognition (or is it faith?) that there is a proper commercial virtuous circle, where happy staff equals happy customers, equals happy shareholders.

Most companies focus their efforts on creating shareholder value. Tony Hsieh knows that very few people get out of bed in the morning to create shareholder value. A few companies flip this convention on its head and works their butts off the make their staff feel valued, empowered, trusted, respected and dare I say loved. This rubs off on customers big time. And so it’s pretty good for profits too.

If any of this resonates, you should read Delivering Happiness: A Path to Profits, Passion and Purpose. If you think it sounds like a load of old tosh, you should read Delivering Happiness: A Path to Profits, Passion and Purpose.

What motivates you?

I bumped into this very clever video the other day. Actually, one of our engineers posted the link on Yammer – but that’s another story…

It’s a 10 minute presentation by Dan Pink, author of the much acclaimed Drive: The Surprising Truth About What Motivates Us, which contains some really interesting insights drawing on four decades of scientific research on human motivation.

Most experts agree that money is never at the top of the list of factors which motivate people. Dan Pink agrees with this with one notable exception; higher pay equals better performance provided the job being performed involves only mechanical/repetitive tasks. Where work calls for anything beyond this, such as rudimentary cognitive skills, creativity and decision making, larger rewards can actually lead to poorer performance.

Personally I think there is a very simple sociological issue exposed here which does not get discussed. People who perform jobs that are very mechanical and repetitive tend to be less well paid.

Poorly paid people will respond to financial incentives. It’s blindingly simple. They need the money. People who routinely need to exercise their cognitive skills, creativity and make big decisions are by default paid much higher salaries. When you are paid a lot, financial incentives are far less compelling. They don’t need the money quite so much.

He does not exclude money completely as a work place motivator. If you don’t pay enough, people won’t be motivated. Pink’s fundamental premise is that provided you pay enough, and thereby take the issue of money off the table, then autonomy, mastery and purpose become the three main forces for motivation and engagement. I guess this is not inconsistent with Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs, which most psychologists and sociologists seem to swear by.

The content of the video is very interesting in its own right, but what makes it a truly great find is the very clever and ever so engaging use of animation as an alternative to death by PowerPoint. I think they call it scribing, and a British company called Cognitive Media appear to be pioneering this stuff.

Honestly, it really works. Judging by the number of ‘likes’ and positive comments on the Yammer thread, people really enjoyed the experience. I found the technique quite riveting. Give it a bash; it is 10 minutes well invested if, like me, you are turned on by interesting new ways to communicate.

I was delighted to see Atlassian get a mention as well. Atlassian are right up there with Netflix and Zappos when it comes to promoting the importance of a strong company culture as a differentiator and source of genuine commercial advantage. In this context, Atlassian are held up as an example of the importance of autonomy at work.

Once a quarter, engineers at Atlassian are given 24 hours to work on whatever they want, with whoever they want, however they want. The only ask is at the end of the 24 hours they show the rest of the company what they have been up to. According to Dan Pink, that one day of “pure undiluted autonomy” has led to a whole array of fixes to existing software and a whole array of ideas for new products that otherwise would never have emerged. Instead of paying an innovation bonus, they take the view that “you probably want to do something interesting, let me just get out of your way.”

Google famously do the same with their 20% time and Yahoo call them Hack Days. I like!