Creative Disruption

Put down your copy of Cognitive Surplus or Rework, it’s time to talk business: or at least three books about business written by consultants that I think anyone who  reckons they know what disrupted businesses should do next should read.

Consultants have one great advantage when they’re writing books: they are walking bibles of case histories. They have spent years walking in and out of businesses getting privileged access to both people, and more importantly to numbers. If they’re good, they know the difference between stuff that sounds good and stuff that really makes a difference to the business.

Unfortunately, they also have a slight disadvantage in that they are not always, shall we put it delicately, the most  elegant constructors of prose. But these three books are well worth the effort.

The first of these is Beyond the core: expand your market without abandoning your roots by Chris Zook and his team at Bain. This is one of three books, all of which deserve your attention – but this one tackles the issue of looking for adjacencies – and buying your launching your way into new markets.

You know that whole thing about ‘Asking what business you’re in’ [it all started with Theodore Levitt's HBR paper 'Marketing Myopia' if you're interested, read the .pdf here ], well, when you’ve worked it out, and you have decided you have freedom to go an buy our launch your way into a new sector or geography, you should really read Zook’s book before doing anything.

Zook looks at why some companies are good at moving into adjacencies and others don’t. I shamelessly lift some of his advice in my book (credited of course). When you read it, you can see how the likes of WPP and Cisco have continued to evolve successfully; and why Naspers and Schibsted have done such a great job of building and buying their way into being real internet businesses as opposed to newspapers with digital bits.

The key lessons: go far enough, but not too far (he has an excellent points based system of working out whether an adjacency is really too much of a stretch); and repeatability.

The next is Jonathan Knee’s The Curse of the Mogul: What’s wrong with the world’s leading media companies, which contains the great chapter heading ‘Efficiency is sexy’.

Knees argument is that media moguls love to behave as if they’re in the swashbuckling wild west of business, cutting big deals lef, right and centre, but if they just dampened down their egos, and focussed on the basics (hence the efficiency is sexy chapter), they’d build much stronger businesses.

He points out that during Michael Eisner‘s time at Disney, for example, the real increase in profits didn’t come from cinema releases, but from opening the theme parks for an extra day, removing the limit on how many people could be in the park at the same time an increasing the entrance fees. Or as he puts it in good old fashioned terms: increasing capacity and putting your prices up.

He is scathing about the internet’s impact on media businesses – pointing out [rightly] that it erodes sources of competitive advantage. I don’t completely buy his recommendation of focussing on local media, but his puncturing of egos and mogul rhetoric is refreshingly blunt.

Finally, and also on the efficiency front, is the rarest of things: a funny book about cost control.  Andrew Wileman’s Driving Down Cost: How to manage and cut cost intelligently; which I suspect is doing the rounds at Whitehall at the moment. This came out with perfect timing, just as the recession hit; and at GMG we had at least three consultants send it to us as they were pitching for cost-control work.

There’s nothing particularly exciting about cost control – but Wileman is – unlike the other two – a naturally engaging writer, and he makes his points well. Rather unbelievably, there were bits that I actually laughed out loud while reading – but then, maybe I had been spending a little too much time working with consultants.

The point of all of these books is that they are no-nonsense and methodical. They aren’t caught up in hype or abstract concepts, just the real challenges of trying to make your business better. I learned a lot from all of them.

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One of the things I’ve learned over the years, is that just because you really, really want something to be true – and just because it feels like it should be true, doesn’t mean it actually is true.

The hype in the run up to the election was that this was going to be the new media election. You could barely turn on Radio 4 without hearing yet another piece about Twitter and Facebook, and blogs and how the parties were all going social media mad. Today in the paper, Charles has followed this up with a perfectly credible piece about the impact of social media.

And it’s true, there has been Tweeting-a-plenty, and all sort of Facebookery and fun with Photoshop. But a lot of activity is no the same as a lot of impact, and the truth is that it is old media that has led this election and created its focal points.

New and social media has provided a playground for the politically hyperactive; and given those in the business of politics plenty to do. It has allowed news to spread instantly and globally. But it hasn’t, on the basis of this election, changed politics, nor has it changed the nature of the election.

The single biggest shift in voting behaviour has come about as the result of a middle-aged, white, public-school educated politician giving a great broadcast performance on prime-time TV.

Twitter might have provided a wonderful echo chamber during and after the event – but it was good old fashioned TV that swung it. Even more old-fashioned was the fact that this wasn’t a Susan Boyle style moment that everyone just had to watch on YouTube and then racked up tens of millions of views – this was all about the scheduled event itself, and the aftermath – predominately in the mainstream media.

Tens or hundreds of thousands might have been tweeting about it. But millions saw it on the night; and millions more read about it in the papers the next morning. It is so old-fashioned to be almost quaint.

There has been no bott0m-up movement. There has been no mass gathering of the unheard shifting the agenda. The two issues that inspire grass roots momentum: the environment and immigration have been neatly contained, taking their normal minority slots behind the economy, public sector cuts and the personalities of the three leaders.

The biggest ‘story’ of the campaign came as the result of a radio mike, that the PM was wearing of his own consent.

As Rory Cellan-Jones tweeted: “So technology has changed this campaign – the radio mic’

The most telling image to accompany the story – was that of our prime minister with his head in his hands was taken in a BBC radio studio. To make things even more conventional – it was in a Radio 2 studio.

This wasn’t a blogger uncovering something that the old media had left uncovered or something snatched on a cameraphone. It was as mainstream a gaff as you can get.

The newspaper declarations have been real events. The Sun coming out for the Conservatives, and the Guardian’s support of the Lib Dems were headline events. You can argue what impact they actually have; and whether they reflect opinion or lead it. That is almost a side issue – the fact is that for some strange reason here in 2010, this still matters. When the Guardian declared on Friday night, there was a Twitter frenzy. The old lead, the new followed.

The point is that national politics is a mainstream media game. Social media and the internet has provided a new front for everyone to fight on, but it has not changed the rules of the game. There has been no fundamental disruption on a national scale (there might have been on a local scale – but more of that later). When it comes to getting big messages across to mass audiences, you have to admit that old media still does a very good job.

Even on the opinion front, bloggers have failed to make their mark. Simon Jenkins, Jonathan Freedland and Nick Cohen have all done it for me. No blogger, of any affiliation, has, frankly, come close.

So, do we all pack up our Twitter accounts and go home? Hell no – the point is that a general election, particularly one that is actually quite interesting, is the wrong place for Social media to prove its worth. Rather like a World Cup or an Olympics – it is what old media does best.

After the election however, things are likely to change. Single issue campaigns. The changing nature of our public services. Local disappointment with newly elected MPs. A (probable) Labour leadership election. Social media works best mobilising masses on tightly defined campaigns. I suspect there will be plenty of them after May 7.

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The shoffice – note heating, and flask of Hot Lava Java

One of the things I learned the hard way while writing Creative Disruption was that writing a business book is more of of a physical and organisational process than a purely intellectual and creative one.

You need to capture an enormous amount of information (but not too much) and you need to knit it all together into (in my case) a single 70,000 word document. To do this – you need tools, and they have to work.

If you have the luxury of just sitting down at the same desk on the same machine to write everyday, things can be relatively simple. But, I had to do all of this while on the move – working on a number of different laptops and desktops, Mac and PCs. So, I needed tools that would work across different platforms, and offline (I spend a lot of time on trains).
Above all, for someone like myself who has an infinite ability for displacement activity, I needed things that just worked, and that I couldn’t spend hours ‘optimising’.

To call this ‘a system’ would imply far too much organisation; and I have no proof that the result of all of this is a decent book – but this is what I relied on to get the manuscript finished – and that was enough of a milestone for me.

1. Evernote

I needed somewhere – or something – to put all my research into, and after dabbling with a host of different Mac apps, such as DevonThink but that offered too much functionality, and too little portability. Why did Evernote work so well for me?

- Online and offline access
- Invisible syncing
- Tagging – allowed for instant organisation rather than constantly having to set up ‘folders’
- Brilliant web capture (capturing source URL at the same time, which is vital)

2. Dropbox

Perhaps the single greatest productivity tool I have ever had. Effortlessly (and I mean that) syncs folders between different machines – as well as offering web based storage. This was brilliant for writing, because it meant it could crank up any machine and have access to whatever I was working on. It also stopped me having to worry about back-ups, and losing USB sticks (although I did use and lose a few along the way).

In their way, I think that Evernote and Dropbox are the future of software: a seamless mix of online and offline, and accessible from any platform. Free at first, but with payment once you reach a certain level of usage (I have subscribed to both, happily).

3. MS Word

Boring, I know. But when it comes to writing a great big doc, and having to hop between Macs and PCs there’s really no option. In the early phases, when I was just on a Mac I tried using Scrivener, but it was just a bit too clever for me – and frankly I could have spent all year just tinkering with it. Google Docs proved handy for the odd scrap, but isn’t really up to the job, and OpenOffice is just way too clunky. In the end I used about five different versions of Word across Mac and PC, but wrote most on 2007 on the PC. I spent some time with the 2010 beta on the PC, it looks great. I have to admit this made me re-think some of my earlier ‘MS Office is going to be completely replaced by Google Apps thoughts’ (we can go into that another time).

4. HP Compaq 2510p

A standard slab of HP grey notebook, but it’s very light, and has a built in SIM, allowing me to get online anywhere (vital for syncing with Evernote and Dropbox on the move). I love my Macs, but this was more portable and connected, so it won out. And, for the day to day grunt of cranking out text, this did the job perfectly well. I wrote most of the book on this, either on the move, or sitting in my shed with it connected to an external monitor and keyboard.

The growth of cloud-based solutions has made using a PC much more tolerable; but I have to admit that by the end, I was switching back to my Mac when on the move as the twin PC curses of Blue screens of death and sloooooow boot-up times started to cripple productivity.

5. Wikipedia

Boring I know, but perhaps the single biggest change since I last did any significant professional writing (a decade ago) has been the arrival of Wikipedia.

Ironically, one of the case histories in my book is Britannica – and how they have managed to turn the business around (you’ll have to read it!). I have a huge amount of resepect for what they achieved in the face of massive structural change. But, Wikipedia has taken research into a whole new dimension: particularly when you’re looking at the relatively recent history of technology businesses. You want a list of all of IBM or Cisco’s acquisitions? You got it.

I don’t trust it as a single source, rather as an aggregator of sources and a ‘nudger in the right direction’ – and as such, it is peerless.

6. Google desktop

The other tool that has made PC’s more tolerable, by introducing ‘Spotlight’-like search across your hard drive. Despite backing up with Dropbox, at one point I thought I had lost 3,000 words that had taken ages to write (I think I’d accidentally overwritten it). Google Desktop found a cached version somewhere in the depths of my PC – and for that I will be eternally grateful.

7. Business Week/ HBR/ WSJ/ FT

The value of professional content. I happily subscribed to the HBR and WSJ and found them invaluable. Business Week’s archive – especially its reporting on Kodak, was a fantastic resource; and the FT (owned by Pearson – who are publishing my book) was also pivotal. At a later date, I’ll put a bibliography up on here. I suspect it will feature 20 pieces from one of these titles for every blog post I refer to.

8. Powerpoint – for outlining

I don’t like writing outlines in Word, it’s just too, too ugly. So I spent a long time looking for something like OmniOutliner for the PC, or a web based system. Then I had a sudden ‘Doh!’ moment, and just started to use Powerpoint with the pages set to portrait; and using a different page for each section. Worked a treat.

9. Delonghi Gas Heater

I spent much of the Christmas break and many evenings sitting in our shed (see the pic above for my ‘sh-office’). It was freezing. Salvation came in the form of a good old fashioned DeLonghi Gas heater from Argos. Being able to type without gloves and a coat on was a major breakthrough. However, the day when I accidentally set fire to my coat on the gas heater wasn’t so great.

10 Taylor’s Hot Lava Java

Forget braintraining, you need good coffee to get the synapses working first thing in the morning, and to keep you going through those afternoon lulls and late nights. The clever people at Taylors decided to do the caffeine equivalent of turning the volume up to 11, by grading their coffee strength ’6′ one more than the standard maximum level of 5. Did the job for me.

11. Loudon Wainwright

I tried writing in silence but my mind wandered. And I tried writing to classical music, but kept thinking: ‘Oh, get over yourself with your piano sonatas’. I tried going back to Brian Eno’s Neroli- but I’m so over ambient. Then one day, I went on to Spotify and dug up a load of Loudon Wainwright albums I hadn’t listened to in years: History, Album III and Unrequiuted; and they were on repeat whenver I sat down to write. Great apart from one thing: I couldn’t get the lyrics to B-side out of my mind: ‘I work with flowers, that is my work/ From this there is no way that I can shirk /No-no-no there is no complex philosophy/ it’s just because, I’m a bee’.

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